Description

Book Synopsis

An iron-willed mother, an ageing grandmother, a pair of mismatched dogs and 90 mu of less-than-ideal farmland: these are Li Juan’s companions on the steppes of the Gobi Desert.

Writing out of a yurt under Xinjiang’s endless horizons, she documents her family’s quest to extract a bounty of sunflowers amid the harsh beauty and barren expanses of China’s northwest frontier. Success must be eked out in the face of life’s unnegotiable realities: sandstorms, locusts and death.

While this small tribe is held at the mercy of these headwinds, they discover the cheer and dignity hidden in each other. But will their ceaseless labours deliver blooming fields of green and yellow? Or will their dreams prove as distant as they are fragile?



Trade Review

Distant Sunflower Fields is like Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain ... you unconsciously forget the daily hubbub and sink silently into the embrace of the world her words have brought to being.

Xinran | author of The Good Women of China

Distant Sunflower Fields

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    A Paperback / softback by Li Juan, Christopher Payne

    £10.44

    Includes FREE delivery

    RRP £10.99 – you save £0.55 (5%)

    Order before 4pm tomorrow for delivery by Thu 1 Oct 2026.

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      Book details

      Published 12 February 2021
      ISBN-13 9781838905064
      978-1838905064
      ISBN-10 1838905065

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      An iron-willed mother, an ageing grandmother, a pair of mismatched dogs and 90 mu of less-than-ideal farmland: these are Li Juan’s companions on the steppes of the Gobi Desert.

      Writing out of a yurt under Xinjiang’s endless horizons, she documents her family’s quest to extract a bounty of sunflowers amid the harsh beauty and barren expanses of China’s northwest frontier. Success must be eked out in the face of life’s unnegotiable realities: sandstorms, locusts and death.

      While this small tribe is held at the mercy of these headwinds, they discover the cheer and dignity hidden in each other. But will their ceaseless labours deliver blooming fields of green and yellow? Or will their dreams prove as distant as they are fragile?



      Trade Review

      Distant Sunflower Fields is like Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain ... you unconsciously forget the daily hubbub and sink silently into the embrace of the world her words have brought to being.

      Xinran | author of The Good Women of China

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