Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" [Xinhua Photo]

Late Chinese-American writer Iris Chang's critically acclaimed book "The Rape of Nanking" was on the New York Times bestseller list for over two months after its publication in 1997. Ever since then, many Chinese film companies have expressed their interests in rights to make it into a film.

America Online Services Company finally snatched the rights. The company will adapt the book, which describes the systematic rape, torture and killing of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in Nanking in 1937, to the big screen next year.

2007 is also the 70th anniversary of the massacre in the former Chinese capital.

AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis said the company would reveal the Japanese invaders' atrocities from the special angle of European people present in China at the time.

The book, which has drawn wide-ranging attention in English-speaking circles, brought to light that Japanese soldiers turned Nanking into a kind of laboratory in which soldiers were taught to terrorize unarmed and compliant civilians, as they would later do through Asia.

Born and educated in the United States, Iris Chang worked as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune.

In November 2004, Iris Chang succumbed to psychological pressures and committed suicide at the age of 36.