Awards
2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Synopses & Reviews
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: "A vivid, magisterial novel that reaches back to China's civil war and up to the present day" —The Guardian
“In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. I was ten years old.”
Master storyteller Madeleine 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 and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story. Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming’s father, the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China’s political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences.
With maturity and sophistication, humor and beauty, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of life inside China yet transcendent in its universality.
Review
“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
Review
“[A] graceful, intricate novel whose humanity threads through it like a stirring melodic line.” Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
Review
“A powerfully expansive novel…Thien writes with the mastery of a conductor who is as in command of the symphony’s tempo as she is attuned to the nuances of each individual instrument.” Jiayang Fan, The New York Times
About the Author
Madeleine Thien is the author of two previous novels and a collection of stories, and she has been translated into twenty-five languages. Do Not Say We Have Nothing was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. She lives in Montreal.