Jonathan Mirsky
Tale From Tiananmen
Lake with No Name: A True Story of Love and Conflict in Modern China
By Diane Wei Liang
Review 335pp £12.99
Lake with No Name centres on what happened in the spring of 1989 in Tiananmen Square and at Beijing University. I saw much of what Liang describes, and can vouch for the accuracy of her rendering of Tiananmen, which is drawn both from first-hand observation and fiom published accounts. Furthermore, she also makes no attempt to portray herself as a hero or even a significant participant in what the Chinese Communists still call 'the events', or 'the incident'. This is the fascinating and important story of a well-educated young woman who is not afiaid to show herself helpless, pathetic and in pursuit of love more than anything else, even as some of the most titanic events witnessed in twentieth-centurv China are crashing about her.
Liang was born into that vulnerable Chinese group labelled 'intellectuals': virtually anyone, that is, who ddn't work with their hands. They lived lives of shabby gentility in Beijing, like all non-official, uncorrupt people of their sort, enjoying small pleasures within their fadies. Like almost all intellectuals, the Liangs were 'sent down': exiled to the remote countryside-for years during the Cultural Revolution - which began in 1966, the year Liang was born. All her friends had this experience and occasionally, years later, someone would say something
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk