It is customary not to speak ill of the dead, but then Han Suyin always considered herself an exceptional individual. Han, who died Friday in Lausanne, Switzerland, at age 95, achieved fame when her 1952 romance novel "A Many-Splendoured Thing" was made into a charming movie starring William Holden. But it was her praise for China's 1966 Cultural Revolution—a 10-year nightmare of communist chaos, murder, forced relocation and cultural obliteration—that defines her legacy.
It would be comforting to think that Han Suyin—the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, who was born to a Chinese father and Belgian mother—was a particularly egregious avoider of the truth. Yet the conceits and constraints that tainted her work affect China scholarship to this day.
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