As Mao Tse-tung's wife, Chiang Ch'ing wielded more power than any other woman in China and possibly in the world. The outside world knew a few facts about her--she had been a movie actress when she met Mao, and became something akin to China's cultural dictator. Yet, like all of China's top leaders, she was shrouded in mystery. Though once considered a possible successor to her husband, she is now in disgrace, apparently held captive by her opponents.

This week, TIME provides an insight into the rise and fall of Mme. Mao, with excerpts from an upcoming book that is one of the most revealing portraits of a Communist Chinese leader ever to reach the West. Comrade Chiang Ch'ing will be published by Little, Brown and Co. next month. Its author, Roxane Witke, had 60 hours of interviews with Mme. Mao during the summer of 1972.

Now an associate professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Witke began learning Chinese while an undergraduate at Stanford University. She pursued her study of the history and literature of China in graduate school and was able to use the language well enough to conduct interviews with Chiang Ch'ing in Chinese. Witke made her 1972 trip to investigate the status of women. Her talks with the wife of Chou En-lai spurred Chou to recommend to Chiang Ch'ing that she talk with Witke too. The subsequent interviews ranged from political intrigue and Mme. Mao's version of the downfall of Lin Piao to her admiration for Garbo and Chaplin.

After Witke had completed her manuscript, Correspondent Richard Bernstein, our China watcher in Hong Kong, flew to New York to read the galleys, select the most revealing excerpts for TIME and write an introduction. Bernstein was especially fascinated by the book's "prolonged glimpse into the kind of privilege enjoyed by Peking's leadership, even as they extol the virtues of egalitarianism."

Bernstein was assisted by Reporter-Researcher Heyden White, daughter of Theodore White, TIME'S correspondent in China from 1939 to 1945, and co-author of Thunder Out of China (1946), a prescient report on the eventual Communist takeover. Heyden White, who grew up hearing about China from her father, was enthralled by Witke's insights: "We can now learn Chiang Ch'ing's own version of what was happening during those turbulent times."

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