Summary
Madeleine Thien: Don't Say We Have Nothing
Don't Say We Have Nothing is a magnificently told story of East and West, a hypnotic saga of music and silence, which turned Madeleine Thien into a literary star.
Determined to piece together the figure of her long-lost father from the fragments of memory and family history, a young Canadian woman of Chinese origin, Li-ling, will have to dive into a sea of stories; take a path that leads from the colorful tea gardens of the era of Mao Zedong's rise, through cities in turmoil and desert expanses to its tragic climax - the bloody student revolution in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. Following the intertwined destinies of two families of Chinese musicians - those who tried to survive Mao's Cultural Revolution and their children, who reaped the bitter fruits of history for a long time, in different parts of the world - Madeleine Thien with a lot of humor and beauty, she wrote a novel about love and betrayal, about strength and affection in the most difficult times, with heart and with amazing understanding. Don't say we have nothing is an intimate and deeply political book, irreplaceably rooted in China, but even more – in the music of human existence.
Biblos Newsletter
New titles, special copies and quiet recommendations from the antiquarian bookshop.