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Nothing to My Name
- Author
- Kangkang Li Kovacs
- Narrator
- Jen Zhao
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 23 June 2026
- Run Time
- 12 hours 37 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Historical fiction
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What to expect
‘Lyrical, haunting and profoundly moving, Nothing to My Name is a story of survival, identity and the fragile hope that passes from mother to daughter’ Jean Kwok
‘Nothing to My Name lives honestly in its history – foolhardy and loving and yet uncharted. A formidable and astonishing new voice’ T. Kira Madden
‘A gripping story of family bonds, redemption and triumph. A masterful debut!’ Marcela Fuentes
1948, Zhoushan, China. Twelve-year-old Ah Xue watches her mother earn a living combing the hair of the wealthy women in their small fishing village, as reports of civil war and the rising Communist revolution grow closer to home.
Years later, Mimosa grows up in the shadow of her parents’ struggles, while the looming tension of the Cultural Revolution threatens to pull her family apart.
And Fei, raised as a boy by the activist father she can’t help but idolise, grapples with her identity in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Spanning four decades and three generations, Nothing to My Name braids an unforgettable story of the ordinary women caught in the tides of societal upheaval, but bound by an insuppressible instinct to survive. From an astonishing new writer, it explores with remarkable tenderness the enduring repercussions of trauma, the search for stability in disorder, and the often contradictory nature of familial love.
Critics Review
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A powerful tale of trauma impacting women told across three generations
Grazia
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Lyrical, haunting and profoundly moving, Nothing to My Name is a story of survival, identity and the fragile hope that passes from mother to daughter
Jean Kwok
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Kangkang Li Kovacs deftly shows us how a culture grows and shape-shifts, remains in stasis, and eats its tail. Still, the ink of activism seems only to gather legibly in the wake of change, reminding readers that resistance can appear unremarkable before it kindles revolution. Nothing to My Name lives honestly in its history – foolhardy and loving and yet uncharted. A formidable and astonishing new voice
T. Kira Madden
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With deep empathy, and with luminous and memorable detail, Kovacs reveals the fragility and resilience of three generations of women grappling with social and cultural upheaval, and the precarity of their lives. Nothing to My Name is at once intimate and epic, sweeping readers along a gripping story of family bonds, redemption, and triumph. A masterful debut!
Marcela Fuentes
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Survival is an instinct. But with grace and courage it can be transformed into triumph. Kangkang Li Kovacs shows us how as she conjures each moment, memory and observation with poignancy and tenderness
Kerry Young
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The language and imagery are vivid and beautiful, but it doesn’t hide the harsh hand that life deals... A wonderful debut novel that is based on the author’s family history
Good Reading Magazine
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At times poetic, remarkably balanced, and unflinching, it is a tale of survival by ordinary women and her own background and talent as a writer, means Kangkang Li Kovacs has produced a book both highly significant and memorable
Queensland Reviewers Collective
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A series of wonderful set pieces, beautiful, inspiring and sometimes horrifying, some specific to the experience of girls and women in later 20th-century China and others reflecting the universal human experience
Historical Novel Society
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Kovacs's first English novel is a remarkable achievement, giving us some inside knowledge about the impact of these significant events in China's recent history
Otago Daily
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Kangkang Li Kovacs
- Narrator
- Jen Zhao
- Duration
- 12 hours 37 minutes
- Release Date
- 23 June 2026
- ISBN
- 9781526687302
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Historical fiction
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Nothing to My Name by Kangkang Li Kovacs, read by Jen Zhao‘Lyrical, haunting and profoundly moving, Nothing to My Name is a story of survival, identity and the fragile hope that passes from mother to daughter’ Jean Kwok ‘Nothing to My Name lives honestly in its history – foolhardy and loving and yet uncharted. A formidable and astonishing new voice’ T. Kira Madden‘A gripping story of family bonds, redemption and triumph. A masterful debut!’ Marcela Fuentes1948, Zhoushan, China. Twelve-year-old Ah Xue watches her mother earn a living combing the hair of the wealthy women in their small fishing village, as reports of civil war and the rising Communist revolution grow closer to home.Years later, Mimosa grows up in the shadow of her parents’ struggles, while the looming tension of the Cultural Revolution threatens to pull her family apart.And Fei, raised as a boy by the activist father she can’t help but idolise, grapples with her identity in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.Spanning four decades and three generations, Nothing to My Name braids an unforgettable story of the ordinary women caught in the tides of societal upheaval, but bound by an insuppressible instinct to survive. From an astonishing new writer, it explores with remarkable tenderness the enduring repercussions of trauma, the search for stability in disorder, and the often contradictory nature of familial love.
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