Private Revolutions (coming Of Age In A New China)

By (author) Yang, Yuan
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A sweeping yet intimate portrait of modern China told through the lives of four ordinary women, each striving for a better future in an unequal society.
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 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.

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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
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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
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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
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A remarkable debut from a gifted author
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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
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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
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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
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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
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A revelatory, moving and tender tale of hopes, fears and change. A real eye-opener about life in contemporary China
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This is a book of delights. Yuan Yang shows us