<p>A reluctant friendship develops between two people in an apartment block in Shanghai. Each has a secret, a hidden past that must not intrude upon the present.<br><br>Beth has been dispatched from Johannesburg to South Africa's diplomatic mission in this vast Chinese metropolis. Newly divorced, childless, and uneasy about her decision to remain in the employ of a regime she distrusts, she is adrift in her own life.<br><br>Until she meets Zhao, her upstairs neighbour. Beth has heard him typing late at night, but Zhao insists she must be mistaken. Zhao – older, unmarried, and a former high-ranking Party journalist – becomes Beth's friend, the one new friend she has allowed her grown-up self to make.<br><br>She is not prepared for a disappearance, followed by the arrival, through her mail slot in the middle of the night, of chunks of typewritten manuscript pages.<br><br>Woven into the story are Langston Hughes's fictional letters to a South African writer about the poet's own mysterious visit to Shanghai; Zhao's quest to uncover the truth behind his mother's disappearance during Communist China's Great Leap Forward; and the story of Beth, a teenager whose decision to join the South African struggle will have far-reaching consequences for the woman she will become.<br><br>How To Be a Revolutionary is a bold, daring and poignant exploration of what we owe our countries, ourselves and those we love.</p>