Liao Yiwu

Liao Yiwu

Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein

Liao Yiwu (Chinese: 廖亦武) is a Chinese author, reporter, musician, and poet from Sichuan, China. He is the author of The Corpse Walker, God Is Red, and For a Song and a Hundred Songs, a memoir of the four years he spent in prison after the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Liao escaped from China in July 2011 and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. He has received numerous awards, including the prestigious 2012 Peace Prize awarded by the German Book Trade and the Disturbing the Peace Award given by the Václav Havel Library Foundation.

His books, several of which are collections of interviews with ordinary people from the lower rungs of Chinese society, were published in Taiwan and Hong Kong but are banned in mainland China. His books have been translated into Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Polish and Czech.

Books

Wuhan: Dokumentarroman

Wuhan: Dokumentarroman by Liao Yiwu (published in German)

Wuhan: Dokumentarroman by Liao Yiwu (published in German) | Wuhan: The Documentary Novel is a fascinating novel which delves into what really happened in Wuhan.
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Bullets and Opium by Liao Yiwu

Bullets and Opium by Liao Yiwu

Bullets and Opium | Real-Life Stories of China After the Tiananmen Square Massacre by Liao Yiwu brings to life the ordinary Chinese citizens who defended Tiananmen Square. Much has been written about the Tiananmen Square protests, but very little exists in the words of those who were actually there. For over seven years, Liao Yiwu — a master of contemporary Chinese literature, imprisoned and persecuted as a counter-revolutionary until he fled the country in 2011 — secretly interviewed survivors of the devastating 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
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The Dongdong Dancer and the Sichuan Cook

Die Dongdong-Tänzerin und der Sichuan-Koch by Liao Yiwu (published in German)

Die Dongdong-Tänzerin und der Sichuan-Koch: Geschichten aus der chinesischen Wirklichkeit by Liao Yiwu | The Dongdong Dancer and the Sichuan Cook: Stories from Chinese Reality is an exciting and direct insight into the real China of today. Peace Prize winner Liao Yiwu has made it his life's work to give the small, oppressed people in China a voice.
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For a Song and a Hundred Songs by Liao Yiwu

For a Song and a Hundred Songs by Liao Yiwu

For a Song and a Hundred Songs | A Poet's Journey through a Chinese Prison by Liao Yiwu captures the four brutal years Liao spent in jail for writing the incendiary poem “Massacre.” Through the power and beauty of his prose, he reveals the bleak reality of crowded Chinese prisons — the harassment from guards and fellow prisoners, the torture, the conflicts among human beings in close confinement, and the boredom of everyday life. In this important book, Liao presents a stark and devastating portrait of a nation in flux, exposing a side of China that outsiders rarely get to see.
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God Is Red by Liao Yiwu

God Is Red by Liao Yiwu

In God is Red by Liao Yiwu, a Chinese dissident journalist and poet — once lauded, later imprisoned, and now celebrated author of For a Song and a Hundred Songs and The Corpse Walker — profiles the extraordinary lives of dozens of Chinese Christians, providing a rare glimpse into the underground world of belief that is taking hold within the officially atheistic state of Communist China.
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The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu

The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu

The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu introduces us to regular men and women at the bottom of Chinese society, most of whom have been battered by life but have managed to retain their dignity: a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a public toilet manager, a leper, a grave robber, and a Falung Gong practitioner, among others. By asking challenging questions with respect and empathy, Liao Yiwu managed to get his subjects to talk openly and sometimes hilariously about their lives, desires, and vulnerabilities.
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