The Burning Forest: Essays on Chinese Culture and Politics

In this book and his others, "Simon Leys" (a non-de-plume for Belgian sinologist Pierre Ryckmans) gives some of the best perspectives on Chinese politics and culture you'll ever read. Besides The Burning Forest, see also The Chairman's New Clothes (1971), Chinese Shadows (1976), and Broken Images (1981). The collection titled The Angel and the Octopus (1999) contains a number of essays on Chinese matters, political and cultural. His Wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Leys) lists several more, but these are in French only. The experience of reading Leys/Ryckmans is like having a bucket of cool -- but not cold -- water poured over your head on a hot day.