The Passage of Roses

To be published 26th June 2026

Half the sky, all the weight

Amid the turbulence of 1970s Beijing, while the fervour of the Red Guards consumes the capital, Mei comes of age in a once-grand courtyard. At the centre of her world is her grandmother, a survivor twisted by the cruelty she has endured as a victim of shifting regimes, who now inflicts the same kind of control upon her family that she once resisted. But despite ruthlessly embracing the madness of the age, the matriarch is unable to repel the political storm that comes to their home and leaves death and a traumatised young girl in its wake.

Years later, Mei becomes an artist, slowly committing memory to canvas. When the faultlines of the revolution are recorded as scars, can she learn to reframe the female form, not as a violated object, but as a subject for liberation?