Mao Is Best-seller

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31275, 23 January 1967, Page 13

Mao Is Best-seller

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, Jan. 22. China’s cultural revolution is sweeping Paris, sending cash registers merrily ringing in city bookshops. Socialists and capitalists alike are eagerly snapping up every book they can find on the Peking power struggle. The top seller is the French-language translation of the collection of sayings by the Chinese Communist Party chairman, Mao Tse-tung. Dubbed the “red bible,” it has become a best-seller within days of going on sale in two different editions. One is a faithful copy of the Chinese original, with 346 tiny pages and a red plastic cover, fitting easily into any pocket and handy for brandishing at demonstrations. The cost is only one franc 40 centimes (about 2s OJd). The other edition, costing three times as much, is mushrooming in bookshops on boulevards in the city centre. Sales assistants say buyers of this “capitalist” version of

Mao’s sayings are mostly wellheeled office workers, businessmen and tourists who think it fashionable to read. One said: “We are always having a rush for books on one particular unusual subject which is the current cult. We had yoga, then karate, now it’s Chairman Mao.”