The World of a Tiny Insect: A Memoir of the Taiping Rebellion and Its Aftermath

"From the cry of a tiny insect, one can hear the sound of a vast world. . . ."

So begins Zhang Daye’s preface to The World of a Tiny Insect, his haunting memoir of war and its aftermath. In 1861, when China’s devastating Taiping rebellion began, Zhang was seven years old. The Taiping rebel army occupied Shaoxing, his hometown, and for the next two years, he hid from Taiping soldiers, local bandits, and imperial troops and witnessed gruesome scenes of violence and death. He lost friends and f...