DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

Stories of Loss and Love

Xinran author Nicky Harman translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:3rd Feb '11

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

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother cover

An extraordinarily powerful collection of heartbreaking, shocking stories, including Xinran's own experience, of Chinese mothers who have lost or had to abandon their daughters and are still searching...

Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women and their lost daughters.

Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women and their lost daughters. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity, these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms - and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth, and drowned.

Personal, immediate, full of sorrow but also full of hope, this books sends a heart-rending message to Chinese girls who have been adopted to show them how things really were for their mothers, and to tell them they were loved and will never be forgotten.

This is an extraordinary book told with generosity and warmth by a brilliant storyteller -- Hilary Spurling * Financial Times *
Xinran rages against the system and gives voice to adoptive mothers overseas who have rescued young Chinese girls and desolate birth mothers who grieve and feel guilt for the loss of their daughters -- Iain Finlayson * The Times *
One would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved * Economist *
No bleaker picture exists of the fate of Chinese female infants...than Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother * Spectator *
Harrowing and heartbreaking yet important tales * SHE Magazine *

ISBN: 9780099535751

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 19mm

Weight: 213g

304 pages