In December 1937, flush with confidence from their victories over the Nationalists in Beijing and Shanghai, the Japanese Army swept into Nanking and, over the next seven weeks, looted and burned the city and systematically raped, brutalized and murdered more than 250,000 defenseless civilians. Officially denied by the Japanese government, the story of this atrocity has been suppressed for more than half a century. Now Iris Chang, a Chinese-American writer whose own grandparents survived the massacre, reveals the full horror of their experience and puts a human face on one of the century's worst horrors.

Chang tells the story from three very different perspectives: that of the Chinese who endured it; the Japanese soldiers who performed it; and that of a heroic group of European and American businessmen and clergy living in Nanking. Led by John Rabe, a German and a member of the Nazi party, these foreigners risked their own lives by defying the Japanese authorities and creating a safety zone in the middle of the city that harbored perhaps 100,000 Chinese.