PRAISE FOR THE PEOPLE'S TRILOGY: 'A brilliant and powerful account ...This excellent book is horrific but essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world's most important revolutions

Guardian

Powerful ... Bold and startling ... Dikötter must be admired for the manner in which he puts a human scale on the enormous barbarities of the communist takeover of China. We cannot begin to understand modern China without being aware of the blood-drenched tale Dikötter so ably relates

Kwasi Kwarteng, Evening Standard

A mesmerizing account of the communist revolution in China, and the subsequent transformation of hundreds of millions of lives through violence, coercion and broken promises. The Chinese themselves suppress this history, but for anyone who wants to understand the current Beijing regime, this is essential background reading

Anne Applebaum

Dikötter performs here a tremendous service by making legible the hugely controversial origins of the present Chinese political order

Tim Snyder

A remarkable work of archival research. Dikötter rarely, if ever, allows the story of central government to dominate by merely reporting a top-down directive. Instead, he tracks down the grassroots impact of Communist policies ... In so doing, he uncovers astonishing stories of party-led inhumanity and also popular resistance ... Dikötter sustains a strong human dimension to the story by skillfully weaving individual voices through the length of the book

Financial Times

This groundbreaking book examines the bloodstained reality behind the word and reveals how it brought tragedy to millions ... Dikötter's achievement in this book is remarkable. He has mastered a mass of original source material, and has done so by mining local archives in China, which have yielded up a host of treasures.

Sunday Times