In 2002 Xinran’s Good Women of China became an international bestseller, revealing startling new truths about Chinese life to the West. Now she returns with an epic story of love, friendship, courage and sacrifice set in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Based on a true story, Xinran’s extraordinary second book takes the reader right to the hidden heart of one of the world’s most mysterious and inaccessible countries. In March 1958, Shu Wen learns that her husband, an idealistic army doctor, has died while serving in Tibet. Determined to find out what happened to him, she courageously sets off to join his regiment. But to her horror, instead of finding a Tibetan people happily welcoming their Chinese “liberators” as she expected, she walks into a bloody conflict, with the Chinese subject to terrifying attacks from Tibetan guerrillas. It seems that her husband may have died as a result of this clash of cultures, this disastrous misunderstanding. But before she can know his fate, she is taken hostage and embarks on a life-changing journey through the Tibetan countryside — a journey that will last twenty years and lead her to a deep appreciation of Tibet in all its beauty and brutality. Sadly, when she finally discovers the truth about her husband, she must carry her knowledge back to a China that, in her absence, has experienced the Cultural Revolution and changed beyond recognition. . .

In 1958, notified that her young husband, a doctor in the Chinese army has been killed in action in Tibet, Shu Wen joins the army, determined to go to Tibet to uncover the truth, only to find herself alone in Tibet, embarking on a thirty-year nomadic odyssey that brings her back to a new China, transformed by the Cultural Revolution, in a poignant novel based on a true story. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

When Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to “open up” China took root in the late 1980s, Xinran recognized an invaluable opportunity. As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, “Words on the Night Breeze” sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most, and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.

In 1994, Xinran met a woman whose story was so extraordinary, it came to obsess her. Of all the Chinese women that Xinran had interviewed for her radio programme (famous in China for its discussion of women's lives), Shu Wen had endured things far beyond the imagination of most people. For over thirty years, she had wandered the empty, silent mountains of north Tibet in search of her husband, a Chinese soldier who was missing in action. She had gone there in the 1950s as a young woman in her prime; she had returned to China grey-haired and utterly changed by her experiences. Shu Wen's life story, brilliantly recreated by Xinran, gives a unique, moving and unforgettable insight into the landscape, religion and nomads of Tibet. At the same time it illuminates the complex and emotional relationship between the Tibetans and Chinese, uncovering the history that lies behind it. But, above all, this is an epic love story - the tale of a woman who adored her husband so much, she gave up everything she knew to travel thousands of miles to one of the most intimidating countries in the world.

In August 2008, when 11 climbers lost their lives on K2, the world's most dangerous peak, two Sherpas survived and are two of the most skillful mountaineers on earth.