For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey through a Chinese Prison
Chinese poet and musician Liao Yiwu recounts the unflinching tale of his impassioned dissidence, subsequent imprisonment, and eventual escape from his home country’s notoriously tight borders. He begins with the death of his sister in 1988, one year before the infamous events of Tiananmen Square that sparked Liao’s protest poem, “Massacre,” which cost him four years in prison. He endured squalor, suffered the abuse of drunken officers, and survived multiple suicide attempts, all the while scribbling notes and fragments that would accumulate to form this memoir, published overseas to international acclaim. Because memoir deals in remembrance, certain passages may sound sensationalized or embellished. But that does not detract from Liao’s clever characterization, fast-paced prose, or enticing storytelling. Now living as an expat in Berlin, Liao continues to denounce China’s ruling class and its so-called state writers, people employed to produce propaganda, among whom Liao includes Nobel laureate Mo Yan. An incendiary exposé and fitting follow-up to God Is Red (2011), Liao’s account of Christianity in China. --Diego Báez