Nick Holdstock

"Samuel Clark likes secrets. He wants to know the hidden stories of the bizarre characters on the little streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. He wants to know about a nymphomaniac, a man who lives under a bridge, a girl with a cracked face. He wants to uncover their histories because he has secrets of his own. He believes, as people do, that he is able to change. He believes, as the whole world does, that there is plenty of time to solve his problems. But Samuel Clark and the rest of the world are wrong"--

A Novel

The Casualties

stories from modern China

Chasing the Chinese dream

How do we deal with the aftermath of catastrophe? It's ten years since a deadly pandemic swept the globe, and five years since the last new recorded case. Society came close to collapse, but now there's a vaccine – though not a cure – people are only dying in the usual ways. Lukas, along with several hundred other infected people, is quarantined in a camp on a mountain of Central Asia. With nothing to do, and no future to speak of, the inmates pass the time drinking, taking drugs, joining a cult, making are or having sex with whoever they can. Rebecca is a scientist who worked on the vaccine that saved the world. Having lost her partner in the years of chaos, she keeps testing the vaccine against mutations of the virus, because it seems inevitable that there will be a next time. Quarantine is a thrillingly intelligent novel about how we – as individuals, and as a society – deal with the aftermath of catastrophe.

Quarantine

What would you do if you knew you were going to die?

China is undergoing the biggest and fastest societal and economic change in human history. Driving this dizzying transformation is the idea of the 'Chinese Dream', the promise that in the new China, anyone can make it. Journalist and writer Nick Holdstock has travelled the length of this huge country in order to find out the reality behind this rhetoric - from the factory-owner, to the noodle seller, from the karaoke maids to the hoteliers, and from the deserted, ageing countryside to the young and overcrowded cities.Chasing the Chinese Dream follows a cast of extraordinary characters: we meet the people getting rich; running factories and buying luxury cars and Louis Vuitton bags. But we also meet those left behind, trapped by a system which forces long hours and no prospects upon them. A spell-binding and magical narrative, this book looks to tell the story of modern China through the people who are living it.

Stories from Modern China

Chasing the Chinese Dream

After isolated terrorist incidents in 2015, the Chinese leadership has cracked down hard on Xinjiang and its Uyghurs. Today, there are thought to be up to a million Muslims held in 're-education camps' in the Xinjiang region of North-West China. One of the few Western commentators to have lived in the region, journalist Nick Holdstock travels into the heart of the province and reveals the Uyghur story as one of repression, hardship and helplessness. China's Forgotten People explains why repression of the Muslim population is on the rise in the world's most powerful one-party state. This updated and revised edition reveals the background to the largest known concentration camp network in the modern world, and reflects on what this means for the way we think about China.

Xinjiang, Terror and the Chinese State

China's Forgotten People

In 1997 a small town in a remote part of China was shaken by violent protests that led to the imposition of martial law. Some said it was a peaceful demonstration that was brutally suppressed by the government; others that it was an act of terrorism. When Nick Holdstock arrived in 2001, the town was still bitterly divided. BACK COVER: 'There is still much that is unclear about what actually happened during that violent week in July 2009. But however terrible its cost - whether it was a massacre of peaceful protestors, an orchestrated episode of violence, or something in between - it was not without precedent.' NICK HOLDSTOCK In 1997 a small town in a remote part of China was shaken by violent protests that led to the imposition of martial law. Some said it was a peaceful demonstration that was brutally suppressed by the government; others that it was an act of terrorism. When Nick Holdstock arrived in 2001, the town was still bitterly divided. The main resentment was between the Uighurs (an ethnic minority in the region) and the Han (the ethnic majority in China). While living in Xinjiang, Holdstock was confronted with the political, economic and religious sources of conflict between these different communities, which would later result in the terrible violence of July 2009, when hundreds died in further riots in the region. The Tree that Bleeds is a book about what happens when people stop believing their government will listen.

Nick Holdstock

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