Dalrymple greatly admires Simon Leys, but he can’t help but feel sorry for the writer Leys humiliated, even though she deserved it:

He continued his ferocious attack, though he made clear that his attack was not personal, it was against all the frivolous idiocies that had been written about Mao and Maoism by Western intellectuals. And it is certainly true that any Chinese who had lived and suffered through those terrible years would suffer a second time if he read the praise lavished on his tormentors by those who were so easily duped by the regime’s flattery machine. There is no doubt that Macchiocchi deserved what she got.

And yet…