The Promise cover art

The Promise

Love and Loss in Modern China

Preview
Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.
Buy Now for ₹607.00

About this listen

Bloomsbury presents The Promise by Xinran Xue, read by Jennifer Lim.

A spellbinding and magical narrative, this is the story of modern China through the women who lived through it.

At the start of the twentieth century in China, the Hans were married in an elaborate ceremony before they were even born. They went on to have nine children and chose colours portrayed in some of their favourite poems as nicknames for them – Red, Cyan, Orange, Yellow, Green, Green Tangerine, Purple, Blue and Rainbow. Fate, and the sweep of twentieth-century history, would later divide them.

Xinran begins with the magic and tragedy of one young couple’s wedding night in 1949, and goes on to tell personal experiences of loss, grief and hardship through China’s extraordinary century. In doing so she tells a bigger story – how traditional Chinese values have been slowly eroded by the tide of modernity and how their outlooks on love, and the choices they've made in life, have been all been affected by the great upheavals of Chinese history.©2020 Xinran Xue (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Asia China Communism & Socialism Ideologies & Doctrines Politics & Government

Critic Reviews

"This book cracks the code of love, loneliness, and belonging in contemporary China." (Xiaolu Guo, author of Once upon a Time in the East)

No reviews yet