Madeleine Thien: ‘In China, you learn a lot from what people don’t tell you’; Guardian, 10/8/16

Claire Armitstead, Guardian; Madeleine Thien: ‘In China, you learn a lot from what people don’t tell you’ :

"Do Not Say We Have Nothing makes the surprising suggestion that part of the solution might lie in the act of copying. The different generations of Marie and Ai-Ming’s families are connected by the manuscript of a novel, “The Book of Records”, chapters of which have been carefully copied out, hidden in walls and beneath floorboards, and passed from hand to hand. “The Book of Records” is precious because it represents a narrative that doesn’t conform to the approved version of Chinese history, Thien explains. “It’s a book with no beginning, no middle and no end, in which the characters are seeing an alternative China where they recognise mirrors of themselves and which they write themselves into.”...

This latest crackdown is yet another variation on the long-running theme of suppression of the individual, making it highly unlikely that either of her mature novels will be published in mainland China, though she hopes they may yet be in Hong Kong. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to describe them as her own Books of Records, embodying the difficult business of remaining imaginatively free while honouring “contested history”."