The Promise cover art

The Promise

Love and Loss in Modern China

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The Promise

By: Xinran Xue
Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
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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 Cultural & Regional Politics & Government

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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)

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Truly endearing listen, and read well. As I listened, I was taken into the stories and memories. Resonating with the anecdotes of love through generations.. The afterwords from Xinran completed and had me in tears as I too recalled the loss one's own love.

Stories that resonate and echo

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Amazing and sincerely touching stories full of truth and emotion for a nation that I'm still discovering its mysteries.. even after the almost 7 years I lived there.. Definitely another must-read book of the wonderful writer Xinran. Hope the best for her and her family!

The truth unfolded.

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