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Private Revolutions

Coming of Age in a New China - THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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Private Revolutions

By: Yuan Yang
Narrated by: Crystal Yu, Gabby Wong, Kae Alexander, Naomi Yang, Yuan Yang
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Bloomsbury presents Private Revolutions by Yuan Yang, read by Gabby Wong, Crystal Yu, Kae Alexander, Naomi Yang and Yuan Yang .

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAAJTE PRIZE 2025

A Financial Times, New York Times and Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year

'As powerfully intimate as it is politically incendiary' VOGUE
'Private Revolutions could be a Netflix series, for family, violence and romance abound' IRISH TIMES
'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

Yuan Yang, the first Chinese-born British MP, tells the stories of four Chinese women striving for a better future in an unequal society. From June, who dreams of going to university rather than raising pigs, to Sam, forced into hiding as her activist peers are lifted from the streets, this is a singularly immersive portrait of a rapidly changing nation – and of the courage of those caught in the swell. Asia Politics & Government Women in Business World China
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Critic reviews

A portrait of the country through four women who grew up there in the eighties and nineties - and refused to accept the life laid out for them. Activists, factory workers, pig farmers turned students: they provide incredible insight into the lives of ordinary Chinese people (Best Books of 2024)
Brilliant, often tragic tales of life for women in modern China . . . It is Yang’s straightforward prose that makes Private Revolutions a compelling read . . . Private Revolutions could be a Netflix series, for family, violence and romance abound (Mei Chin)
An engrossing new book that meticulously reports on a country in the throes of change, using the lives and choices of four women . . . What sets the story told in Private Revolutions apart is the speed and magnitude of this upheaval, captured by Yang with palpable admiration for the women negotiating these seismic shifts one day at a time (Mythili Rao, Book of the Day)
A remarkable debut from a gifted author (Patrick Maguire)
Fascinating . . . A powerful, personal perspective on a country of almost unimaginable scale and significance
A story of an economic revolution and the price of it, one that Yang has chosen to tell by focusing on the individual stories of four remarkable women she has met . . . Yang knows how to tell a story and how to capture attention. Each of these interwoven tales is studded with fascinating details . . . We are absorbed and sometimes gripped. The picture that emerges is one of sheer grit (Christina Patterson)
The stories Yang tells are the fruit of a set of close relationships that would be difficult to achieve now in China’s changed mood. It is the tale of a unique time and an intimate picture of what it was like to live through, and learn to navigate, the storm (Isabel Hilton)
Private Revolutions interweaves the stories of a quartet of women born in the wake of China’s Cultural Revolution, from Leiya, a garment factory worker in Shenzen, to Sam, a middle-class schoolgirl turned Maoist revolutionary. The prose is as powerfully intimate as it is politically incendiary, tackling the censorship and economic voraciousness plaguing China today head on
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')
A revelatory, moving and tender tale of hopes, fears and change. A real eye-opener about life in contemporary China (Peter Frankopan)
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)
All stars
Most relevant
It’s ok. I’d really looked forward to it but it’s not as engaging as I’d hoped, although the overall arc of each of the women stories is interesting the details are fairly tedious

It feels like another author might have taken the same research and made a truly compelling book

One of the narrators - the person reading Th fourth women’s story - is painful to listen to, with weak English pronunciation and robotic sound. I ended up skipping all of her chapters.

Patchy

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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

An engaging portrait of modern China

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I enjoyed listening to this book. Yang designed the book intelligently, telling the stories of individuals by blending individual experience with the momentous changes and political backdrop of Modern China. The book gave a sense of the tensions that individual people, especially from rural and disadvantaged areas, have had to shoulder as their country has changed beyond recognition.

Interesting listen, blending historic change with individual lives

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At first I thought the way the chapters are organised might make it hard to follow the threads of individual stories, but in the end I got absorbed by the details and fully immersed in each woman's story. It helped that each story had a different narrator and the narration was also excellent, although not all of the Chinese place names were pronounced correctly, but that was only a minor issue in an otherwise great listen.

Fascinating insights into women's lives

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This book is OK, , If you have already read many books on this topic and are looking for something else, you will probably find Private Revolutions enjoyable enough.

It's OK.

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