Glad to highlight a new audiobook company dedicated to bringing modern Chinese fiction to a wider audience through new and sensitive recordings of English translations.

Silk Gauze Audio allows you to get to know key Chinese authors and their works, also providing insightful context for the seismic change through which many of them lived, and which informs much of their writing.  

Just launched, during its first year Silk Gauze Audio will focus on some of the giant literary names of the early 20th century, such as Lao She, Ba Jin and Mao Dun, as well as some less well known writers. The 1920s through to the Communist victory in 1949 was a tumultuous and traumatic period in Chinese history during which this vast country shook off its age-old tradition of empire to forge a modern state, enduring both a searing civil war and war with Japan.  It was also a time of great literary and artistic ferment.  

Created by the award-winning British audiobook producer Nicola Clayton, who studied Chinese and lived in Shanghai and Hong Kong, Silk Gauze Audio caters to a range of needs, whether you are planning to travel in or to work with China, or you simply want to read for leisure, or are studying Chinese. The site allows you to choose between audio and print editions, including its own newly published audio versions.  

If you are unfamiliar with modern Chinese literature, Silk Gauze Audio will ease you in gently so you can find your way to the works which will most engage you, and through them, to a greater understanding of China and its tempestuous modern history.