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Colours of the Mountain author Da Chen dies at 57
- His breakthrough book in 1999 drew on the abuses he and his family suffered during China’s Cultural Revolution
- Banished from school and sent to labour camps, he returned to education after Mao Zedong’s death, excelled and found a new life in the United States
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Da Chen, the brilliant storyteller who drew from the hardships he suffered as a persecuted child growing up in the midst of China’s Cultural Revolution to create the critically acclaimed memoir Colours of the Mountain, has died aged 57.
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Chen died of lung cancer on December 17, his wife, Dr Sun-Ling Chen, told Associated Press on Tuesday from the family’s home in Temecula, California.
His most recent book, Girl Under a Red Moon, was published just three months ago.
Chen’s breakthrough came in 1999 with the critically acclaimed, best-selling Colours of the Mountain, in which he recounted the abuses he and his family suffered during the later years of the country’s Cultural Revolution.
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It was a time when the Communist Party and its leader, Mao Zedong, were cementing their grip on power following the country’s 1949 revolution, and Chen’s family, who had been prosperous landowners, became pariahs, as did many others.
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