After her father’s death, Marie meets Ai-Ling, whose father, Sparrow, taught Kai at the Conservatory. The story starts in Vancouver, where ten-year-old Marie finds it hard to understand why her father, Jiang Kai-a renowned pianist who survived the Cultural Revolution and later moved to Canada- took his own life in Hong Kong in 1989. This third novel from Thien-a Canadian writer of Malaysian-Chinese heritage-this is a touching tale of the intertwined lives of three music prodigies at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, who confront the cruelty of the Red Guards and the re-education programmes during the Cultural Revolution. Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien (Granta, July 2016 Knopf Canada, May 2016) Well-researched and devastatingly beautiful, Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing is an ambitious book that articulates the reverberating impact of totalitarianism in communist China, as well as the transforming power of friendship and humanity.
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