The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

"A powerful, landmark book, riveting in its horror." —Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb

In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered—a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Historian Iris Chang tells the story from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese.

More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, in The Rape of Nanking Chang analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. It also tells of the concerted effort during the Cold War on the part of the West and even China to stifle open discussion of this atrocity.

Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang’s classic is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.

“[In The Poppy War] I also drew heavily from Iris Chang’s work... [The Rape of Nanking] touches on many themes—outrage, intergenerational memory and trauma, nationalism and erasure—that are defining features of the study of the Rape of Nanjing today.” —R.F. Kuang, BookPage