Die Liebe in Zeiten Mao Zedongs

After the success of "Wuhan," the peace prize winner and well-known critic of China, Liao Yiwu, now compellingly recounts the Chinese Cultural Revolution: the era when China became a dictatorship. In secret, Liao Yiwu's novel "Love in the Time of Mao Zedong" was created, which vividly encapsulates the absurdity of China through one life and four love stories. Yiwu's monumental book was completed while he was still in prison in Sichuan and was subsequently smuggled out page by page as a secret message. It was only in exile in Berlin that the individual parts came together again. The focal point of this intergenerational story is the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which, in its ruthlessness, ranks among the darkest periods of the last century. Children betrayed their parents, and lovers denounced each other – the underlying fear of betrayal became a daily companion. Thus, the author authentically and intimately depicts the journey to the emergence of the arbitrariness that suffocates China today. "Liao Yiwu is arguably the most versatile chronicler of contemporary China." - Der Tagesspiegel.