张贤亮见证的死刑和性，叶兆言的文革记忆，朱正琳的铁窗岁月，徐友渔的大串连，许志英的“五七干校”，邵燕祥妻子的生活碎片，杨益宪的四年牢狱生涯，还有冰心老人写给家人的温馨感人的书信……在本书这些著名作家的回忆中，文化大革命不再是个宏大、抽象的字眼，不同角度的叙述将人带入了私人的、日常的细节之中，一个时代变得具体鲜活，记忆被赋予了见证的力量。

It all began with a dream. A young woman saw a white tiger leap into her lap. It was both auspicious and unlucky—her son, the fortune-teller said, would grow up with no brothers, and his father's health would be endangered by his birth. That son, however, would have a distinguished career, after going through many misfortunes and dangers.
The dream was prophetic. The child was his mother's only male child and his father died of illness when the boy was only five. He grew up during the wartime and period of political turmoil in China, passing through many troubles, and he has had a very distinguished career. He is Yang Xianyi, renowned scholar, translator and interpreter of Chinese and Western literature.
This delightful memoir of Yang Xianyi gives a candid and entertaining account of himself as a lighthearted and mischievous young man who immersed himself in the learning of European culture, ancient and modern, when he studied at Oxford in the 1930s. But it is also the illuminating self-portrait of a deeply patriotic intellectual living in a China under the throes of change, giving rare insight into the survival of a courageous, witty and principled individual during the harsh century of Chinese liberation.

杨宪益的自传是以英文写成的，《漏船载酒忆当年》是其中文译本。自传的意大利文译本的书名为“从富家少爷到党员同志”，这从一个侧面粗线条地概括了它的内容。
杨宪益前半生的漫游与学习经历，显露一位浊世佳公子喜好浪漫与冒险的情怀，读起来像一部流浪汉小说或传奇；此后个人命运随时代洪流浮沉簸荡，又像一部政治宣言书。别具会心的读者，更不妨将它看做一册人生的读本：当生活的歧路纷然变乱于前，当世间的苦难不待招邀而至，人又当如何选择，如何持守。