Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award // Finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
"A powerfully expansive novel…Thien writes with the mastery of a conductor." —
New York Times Book ReviewTrade Review"This is a moving and extraordinary evocation of the 20th-century tragedy of China, and deserves to cement Thien’s reputation as an important and compelling writer." -- Guardian
"Extraordinary…It recalls the panoramic scale and domestic minutiae of the great 19th-century Russian writers…[A] highly suspenseful drama…as courageous and principled as resistance itself." -- Financial Times
"[A] graceful, intricate novel whose humanity threads through it like a stirring melodic line." -- Sam Sacks - The Wall Street Journal
"A magnificent epic of Chinese history, richly detailed and beautifully written." -- The Times
"Powerful." -- The New Yorker
"A deeply profound and moving tale where music, mathematics and family history are beautifully woven together in a poetic story…Full of wisdom and complexity, comedy and beauty, Thien has delivered a novel that is both hugely political and severe, but at the same time delicate and intimate, rooted in the tumultuous history of China." -- Herald
"Music is at the center of this ambitious saga of totalitarian China, where classical musicians were persecuted during the Maoist Cultural Revolution…Thien’s intricate narrative slowly lays bare the lives of three musical friends living through a totalitarian era when serious music had to survive driven underground, like forbidden love." -- Sunday Times
"A splendid writer." -- Alice Munro
"Imagination, Nabokov says, is a form of memory.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a perfect example of how a writer’s imagination keeps alive the memory of a country’s and its people’s past when the country itself tries to erase the history. With insight and compassion, Madeleine Thien presents a compelling tale of China of twentieth century." -- Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants
