Madeleine Thien is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes as well as the novels Certainty and Dogs at the Perimeter, all of which have won international acclaim and prizes. Thien’s books and stories have been published in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, and have been translated into 25 languages. Her literary criticism, essays, and multimedia work are widely available. Her work covers topics as diverse as music and human rights, personhood, female beauty, state surveillance, visual art, race, literary politics, neighbourhoods and the Québec rodeo. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, the Financial Times, Five Dials, Brick and Al Jazeera. The daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada, she lives in Montreal.

Do not Say We Have Nothing

Longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is an extraordinary novel set in China before, during and after one of the most important political moments of the past century. Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations—those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the mid-twentieth century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989.