China Witness

Voices from a Silent Generation

Xinran author Nicky Harman translator Julia Lovell translator Esther Tyldesley translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:7th May '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

China Witness cover

This magnificent and groundbreaking work of oral history gives voice to a forgotten generation and reveals the secret history of 20th-century China.

Includes grandparents and great-grandparents who sum up in their own words the vast changes that have overtaken China's people over a century. This book is also at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, and, Westernization.China Witness is the personal testimony of a generation whose stories have not yet been told. Here the grandparents and great-grandparents of today sum up in their own words - for the first and perhaps the last time - the vast changes that have overtaken China's people over a century. The book is at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, modernization, Westernization - and have survived into the 21st century. We meet everyday heroes, now in their seventies, eighties and nineties, from across this vast country - a herb woman at a market, retired teachers, a legendary 'double-gun woman', Red Guards, oil pioneers, an acrobat, a female general, a lantern maker, taxi drivers, and more- those whose voices, as Xinran says, 'will help our future understand our past'.

Right here we see the red lines that many Chinese still draw for themselves in public discourse, or even privately, the boundaries they dare not cross even today. No other style of storytelling could have exhibited them with more clarity or greater rawness * The Times *
An incredibly moving and ambitious collection... There is a great deal of light in this powerful book * Independent *
Another excellent book...ambitious * Literary Review *
These stories are often heart-rending, but are recounted in a very self-effacing way by the subjects themselves... [The book] is deeply engaging and focuses almost exclusively on issues and experiences rarely discussed in China or elsewhere. It takes people to places they would not otherwise have been able to go: into the minds of previously silent witnesses... a stunning insight into its [China's] people * Herald *
If you loved Jung Chang's Wild Swans you'll love this book * Image magazine *

ISBN: 9780099501480

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 28mm

Weight: 320g

464 pages