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 *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.
