Gioietta Kuo had an idyllic childhood in the Himalayan foothills of Chengdu, Sichuan, with a panda and porcupine as pets.   Stories of waterwheel, waterclock, silkworms and blue ghost.   Exciting hike across a bamboo suspension bridge to camp by a Buddhist monastery in Kham, Tibet [see preview 3].  Harrowing tales of her feudal relatives — her cousin who had her arm chopped off by her drunken father and her aunt being made to die drinking opium for having an illegitimate baby who was thrown into a river.

At just 14, she was abruptly dumped into an English boarding school with little English,  Gioietta grew up to be  beautiful and academically brilliant.   Here is an unique and thrilling tale of her metamorphosis from one great civilization to another — her struggles of adaptation, conflicts of identity and her accomplishments — Cambridge, PhD in nuclear physics at age 24, Fellow at St Hilda's college, Oxford and later at Princeton, USA. She is an expert on CT image reconstruction with 2 patents to her name [see Biography].

Inevitably she was pursued by many young men of different nationalities. Among them was an Italian billionaire who fell in love with her on a Paris-Milano flight [see Preview 2]. May be it is her father, her profession or her personality, her early life revolved around the shady side of politics — spying.   Dancing with a Russian physicist from communist Soviet Union in the streets of Paris on Bastille day at the height of cold war led to a sinister skirmish with Soviet intelligence, KGB, who wanted her as their spy, and British foreign counter Intelligence MI6 [see Preview 1].

Her father was a diplomat for Taiwan in Paris. He was larger than life, a patron of the arts, a fabulous cook, kind, generous and recklessly extravagant especially with women. He doted on Gioietta and was devastated when she left Paris  to marry a Croatian and live in Tito's communist Yugoslavia.   Most sensational, her father vanished —  escaping to Beijing  pursued by Taiwan agents who wanted his head for high treason.  A real life spy story.  All
cloak and dagger stuff.

In the Epilogue, you learn what it means to being a Chinese.  Despite over 50 years in the West, and she has acquired a veneer of a Westerner; yet, right underneath, her inner self is propelled subconciously by goals, focus and drive - elements which she recognises as belonging quintessentially to the Chinese psyche.  Is it possible, she asks, that she has  been on auto-pilot all her life? That is, has she simply lived out what she had  hardwired in her, through her DNA?

Since 2006, she has written over 50 articles on the global environment [see Recent Publications].  Among them many in the Chinese press: People's Daily — organ of the Chinese government and World Environment — Journal of the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection,   She also writes for several Washington think tanks: World Future Society, wfs.org, Worldwatch.org and Futuretakes.org. She is a senior Fellow of her resident think tank American Center for International Policy Studies, amcips.org.

Gioetta with father in London 1965	Gioetta in Paris - 1958

Our campsite with Mado up a tree - in 1960	Goran, Gioietta and a friend - Mado 1960

TO ORDER - Click Here or phone 1-888-280-7715
Available in ebook and paperback:

AUTHOR CONTACT:  kuopet@comcast.net