Maoism: A Global History is a milestone in describing a harrowing legacy

Julia Lovell's book on Maoism is concerned with understanding the phenomenon of Maoism when it swept the globe, in some places politically and in most places ideologically and intellectually.

Anyone who has visited China would have seen that Mao Zedong has a larger-than-life posthumous presence there. It is difficult to escape him. His body lies embalmed in a huge mausoleum at one side of Tiananmen Square, which is also dominated by his portrait. But it is not just through symbols that Mao is omnipresent in China. His presence, as Julia Lovell notes, is more palpable “in the deep politicisation of its judiciary; the supremacy of the one-party state over all other interests; the fundamental intolerance of dissident voices”. Yet, present-day China has turned its back on Mao’s communism. The