Barbara Demick Longlist Interview
30 September 2025
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
China’s Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins
Barbara Demick
In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned.
What they didn’t know – and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing – was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin.
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick’s role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China’s history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China’s one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.
- Published by:
- Granta Publications
What the judges said“Daughters of Bamboo Grove is a fascinating book, which humanises the one-child policy that came to define so much of the world's understanding of China in a particular period. Through compelling storytelling, she exposes the lives fragmented and families torn apart by its implementation and the complexities and lasting trauma of this far-reaching policy.”
About the author
Barbara Demick won the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2010 for Nothing to Envy, which also won a Winner of Winners Award in 2023 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Baillie Gifford Prize. Barbara was also longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2020 for Eat the Buddha and is also the author of Besieged which won the George Polk Award, the Robert F Kennedy Award and was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize
