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Book at Bedtime: Crimson China

Book at Bedtime: Crimson China: Episode 1

Crimson China

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, Crimson China, Episode 1

A suicidal woman at Morecambe Bay finds herself saving the life of someone else.

Crimson China. Penny Downie and Elizabeth Tan read from Betsy Tobin's novel. A woman tries to commit suicide in Morecambe bay, and ends up saving the life of a cockle picker.

By Betsy Tobin. On a freezing night in February, a woman wades into the waters of Morecambe Bay in a drunken bid to commit suicide. Braced for death, she finds herself instead saving a man's life-a young Chinese cockle picker, one of the only survivors of a tragic mass drowning. 

For Wen- now missing, presumed dead-Angie provides an unexpected sanctuary. They share neither language nor experience, but she agrees to let him stay with her and 'disappear'. Within a short time their unlikely pairing blossoms into something darkly passionate. 

But Wen's past soon catches up with him. He is still in debt to the snakeheads who brought him out of China. And when his sister, Lili, travels to Britain in search of his memory, she unwittingly seals his fate. 

Crimson China is a novel that traps the reader and listener at the outset, shining a light on a tragic, hidden world that runs in parallel to our own. It is a story of identity and culture, of the irrepressibility of the human spirit, and the powerful undertow of love.

Betsy Tobin was born in the American Midwest and moved to England in 1989. She is the author of three other novels, Bone House, Ice Land & The Bounce.

Abridged by Eileen Horne
Read by Penny Downie and Elizabeth Tan


Produced by Clive Brill
A Pacificus Production for BBC Radio 4.

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Penny Downie and Elizabeth Tan read from Betsy Tobin's novel

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