SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2025
A Financial Times, New York Times and Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year
'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
Yuan Yang, the first Chinese-born British MP, tells the stories of four Chinese women striving for a better future in an unequal society. From June, who dreams of going to university rather than raising pigs, to Sam, forced into hiding as her activist peers are lifted from the streets, this is a singularly immersive portrait of a rapidly changing nation - and of the courage of those caught in the swell.

Portrait

Yuan Yang was born in 1990 in China, where she lived with her grandparents for four years before her parents brought her to the UK. She returned to China as an adult, posted there as a correspondent for the Financial Times; after the mass expulsion of journalists from China in 2020, she was one of the few journalists writing in English left in the country. She moved back to the FT's London headquarters as their first China-Europe Correspondent, and in 2024 she was elected as the Labour MP for the new constituency of Earley and Woodley. She is the first ever Chinese-born MP in UK history. Private Revolutions is her first book.