Nien Cheng, 1915-2009

Nien Cheng, whose searing account of the Cultural Revolution -- “Life and Death in Shanghai” -- remains a landmark in the literature of resistance and an invaluable inside account of the horrors of that murderous period in Chinese history, died earlier today in Washington. She was 94.

The widow of a former Kuomintang diplomat who remained in China after the Communist Revolution, she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured during the Cultural Revolution. When Nien was released six and a half years later, she searched for her daughter and only child, Meiping, only to find that she had been murdered by the Red Guards for refusing to denounce her mother. "Life and Death in Shanghai," published in the mid-1980s to wide acclaim, became a bestseller. “The keenness of her thought and expression is such that it constitutes some form of martial art," the New York Times wrote in a review.

She later settled in Washington, where she lived what she called the evening of her life. A woman of rare loveliness, with a delicate beauty and immense generosity, she enriched the lives of others with her sharp wit, unflinching directness and beguilingly philosophical view of life. And death. She carried on, living alone with great vigor and spirit, full of interest in life and politics, ever watchful of tyranny, almost defiantly managing her own life until very recently, when her health rapidly deteriorated.

She sometimes spoke of the necessity of having "a task" in life. She had hers and did not fail at it: Defying her captors, bearing witness, and then living the unbearable with a dignity that seemed touched with grace.

By Charles Krauthammer | November 2, 2009; 5:22 PM ET