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Nothing to My Name

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What to expect

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 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

A powerful tale of trauma impacting women told across three generations
Grazia
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
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
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
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
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
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
Author Kangkang Li Kovacs
Narrator Jen Zhao
Duration 12 hours and 37 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781526687302
Format Audiobook
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre Historical fiction
Availability AU, GB, IE

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