Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel by Madeleine Thien

Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award // Finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

"A powerfully expansive novel…Thien writes with the mastery of a conductor."
―New York Times Book Review

Epic Story of Family, Art, and Revolution

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. Her quest seeks answers in the fragile layers of their collective story.

This quest unveils how Kai, her enigmatic father and 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. The novel shows how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences.

With maturity, 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.

Product Details (Reprint Edition)

• Title: Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Novel
• Author: Madeleine Thien
• Format: Paperback (Reprint)
• Publisher: W. W. Norton
• Publication Date: July 13, 2017
• ISBN-13: 9780393354720
• ISBN-10: 0393354725