The Corpse Walker

by Liao Yiwu

Fourteen Chinese lives the state would rather you didn't hear.

For you if

you want to understand China through the people its official narrative has decided do not exist

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Liao Yiwu spent four years in Chinese prison after writing a poem about the Tiananmen Square massacre. When he was released he spent a decade interviewing people at the margins of Chinese society — a corpse walker, a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a Tiananmen survivor, a cannibalism victim from the Cultural Revolution, a Falun Gong practitioner. This collection gives the microphone to everyone the Chinese state would prefer to silence. The most democratic Chinese dispatch — not one voice but many, all from the bottom of a hierarchy that pretends its bottom doesn't exist.

Where This Book Lives

Setting: China • East Asia
Voice: Written by a Chinese author
Themes: censorship oral history
Topics: cultural revolution falun gong persecution tiananmen square massacre

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