Tania Branigan was the China correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, from 2008 to 2015. She continues to work for the paper as its foreign editorial writer. In her new book, Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution, she writes about the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, often dated from 1966 to 1976, on Chinese society and politics today. Throughout the deeply reported book, Branigan introduces readers to a variety of ordinary Chinese people — both participants and victims — whose lives have been shaped by those years of profound upheaval. In a recent interview she talked to The Wire about the book’s key themes. The following is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation. Tania Branigan.Illustration by Kate Copeland Q: You write in your book about having that nagging feeling as a foreign correspondent in China that there was an overarching story that you were not writing about. And how you came to the conclusion, particularly after you