What's Left? What's Right?

Muriel Seltman and her husband were two idealists who joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1952 hoping to change the world. They went to work abroad, initially in North Korea and then in China, where they unexpectedly experienced the early part of the Cultural Revolution. What’s Left? What’s Right? is Muriel’s political autobiography about those years.

‘My book deals mainly with the idealistic visions of our younger days in the Communist Party; then through life-changing experiences in North Korea and China,’ observes Muriel. ‘Those events forced us to discard, with the greatest difficulty and soul-searching, the notion that the Soviet Union and China were utopias for a better future for people all over the world.’

Muriel describes the motivations, experiences and struggles she and her husband faced, explaining the ideas vs. reality of Communism as she saw them acted out, offering a unique and detailed first-hand account of life in North Korea and China during this tumultuous time.

Readers interested in history, Marxism, Communism or the Chinese Cultural Revolution will find this memoir to be of interest. This is a revised edition of What’s Left? What’s Right?, which was originally publushed in 2010.