Audiobooks Narrated by Mark Kitto

Conquering the Desert of Death: Across the Taklamakan

The ferocious Taklamakan desert, the harshest on earth, is known by the Chinese as the 'desert of death' or the 'place of no return' - you go in but you don't come out. It sustains no life and has taken the lives of many of those who have ventured in. Its unknown depths are said to be haunted by demons and spirits and legend has it that ancient cities filled with treasure lie lost and buried beneath its dunes. The only certainty is that no human being in history had ever crossed it from end to end. But, after five years of planning, Charles Blackmore together with a team of British, Chinese and Uyghurs and a caravan of thirty camels, set out to accomplish the seemingly impossible: they would cross the Taklamakan, west to east, directly through its unmapped, untrodden centre. 'Conquering the Desert of Death' is at once a deeply personal journey and the story of an adventure that will go down in history as one of the great achievements of exploration. Hear the thrilling story narrated by an actual member of the expedition, Mark Kitto, writer and actor.

Charles Blackmore (Author), Mark Kitto (Narrator)

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China Cuckoo: How I Lost a Fortune and Found a Life in China

‘China Cuckoo’ is the charming true story of a witty and eccentric sinophile Englishman and his China tree-change, narrated by the author. Mark Kitto was the first westerner to return and live in Moganshan, a dilapidated, beautiful Chinese mountain village, since the original foreign residents left in 1949.  In millennial Shanghai, Kitto was the creator of the ‘That's’ city magazine series, the most popular and profitable English language publications in China since the ‘North China Daily News’, the paper of record of concession-era Shanghai. The UK Financial Times described him as a ‘mini media mogul’. In 2004 he suffered the same fate as the man who built the ‘Daily News’. He lost everything to the Communist Party.  Rejecting the corporate world and the glamour of Shanghai, Mark persuaded his urbane Chinese wife to make Moganshan their permanent home. With their two small children they took the bold step of moving their lives to the isolated village, taking over an old brothel to start a western style cafe. In the process the author uncovered the history of the mountain retreat; its ‘discovery’ and development by missionaries, its popularity with celebrities, drug dealers (Chinese and foreign), and its decay under the Communist regime.  Funny, touching and inspiring, ‘China Cuckoo’ is a rare and intimate portrait of life in rural China through the eyes of one man who has survived house-fires, typhoons, corruption and cultural clashes. It is an illustration of past and present China’s relations with foreigners and it describes, in the words of one who has suffered and benefited from both, the risks and rewards of going ‘China Cuckoo’. Mark Kitto has also published ‘That’s China, how a British entrepreneur took on the Chinese propaganda machine’, the full story of his China publishing career, now available as an audiobook. Mark Kitto currently lives in the UK where he is an actor, narrator and editor.

Mark Kitto (Author), Mark Kitto (Narrator)

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That's China: A British entrepreneur versus the Chinese propaganda machine

'One of the better known foreign entrepreneurs of his generation in China.' New York Times In his bestselling debut, 'China Cuckoo', Mark Kitto described how he 'lost a fortune and found a life in China'. In 'That's China', the thrilling prequel, he tells the story of how he made that fortune. For seven roller-coaster years Kitto outwitted competitors and jealous partners to build the most profitable and popular English language publishing business in China since 1949. To the Chinese Communist Party, media is state-owned propaganda. No individuals, let alone foreigners, will ever have a stake in it. No foreigner in modern times has come so close to the heart of the Chinese propaganda machine on his own terms. Not even Rupert Murdoch. Told with Kitto's trademark self-deprecating humour and unsettling honesty, 'That's China' is a rare thing, a business saga that will have you on the edge of your seat all the way to the final showdown; in the highest law court in China. 'Mark Kitto beat the odds' Sunday Times

Mark Kitto (Author), Mark Kitto (Narrator)

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