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Private Revolutions
- Coming of Age in a New China
- Narrated by: Crystal Yu, Gabby Wong, Kae Alexander, Naomi Yang, Yuan Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
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Summary
'As powerfully intimate as it is politically incendiary' VOGUE
'A portrait of China through four women who refused to accept the life laid out for them. Incredible' SUNDAY TIMES
'A revelatory, moving and tender tale of hopes, fears and change' PETER FRANKOPAN
'Meticulously reports on a country in the throes of change' GUARDIAN
*A Sunday Times, Observer & BBC Highlight for 2024*
This is a book about the coming of age of four women born in China in the 1980s and 1990s, in a society about to change beyond recognition.
It is about Leiya, who wants to escape the fate of the women in her village. Still underage, she bluffs her way on to the factory floor.
It is about June, who at fifteen sets what her family thinks is an impossible goal: to attend university rather than raise pigs.
It is about Siyue, ranked second-to-bottom of her English class, who decides to prove her teachers wrong.
And it is about Sam, who becomes convinced that the only way to change her country is to become an activist – even as the authorities slowly take her peers from the streets.
With unprecedented access to the lives, hopes, homes, dreams and diaries of four ordinary women over a period of six years, Private Revolutions gives a voice to those whose stories go untold. At a time of rising state censorship and suppression, it unearths the identity of modern Chinese society – and, through the telling, something of our own.
Critic reviews
'Written by one of the most sensitive and acute chroniclers of contemporary China working today, this is a beautiful, immersive, moving account of the country’s whirlwind transformations since the 1990s, told through the lives of four extraordinarily resilient and idealistic Chinese women' (Julia Lovell, author of 'Maoism' and 'The Opium War')
'This is a book of delights. Yuan Yang shows us the real China in all its complexity — the rich, detailed, often brutal life of the villages and cities. Anyone who wants to understand what China and the Chinese are like will find great pleasure, and sometimes pain, in reading it' (John Simpson)
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What listeners say about Private Revolutions
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- progsense
- 20-05-24
An engaging portrait of modern China
China is something one doesn’t really learn about in school. Yes it’s big, yes it’s nominally communist.
This book illuminates China from a 2D reference for “far away” to real people struggling or thriving against a backdrop of bureaucracy.
It is written in a clear engaging style, it has the clarity of Orwell’s travel writing, but with Kate Adie’s from our own correspondent’s quiet unobtrusive empathy.
Well worth a listen
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