Showing results by author "Madeleine Thien" in All Categories

Ai-Ming tells the story of her family in revolutionary China, from the crowded teahouses in the first days of Chairman Mao's ascent to the events leading to the Beijing demonstrations of 1989. It is a history of revolutionary idealism, music and silence, in which three musicians - the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow; the violin prodigy, Zhuli; and the enigmatic pianist, Kai - struggle during China's relentless Cultural Revolution to remain loyal to one another and to the music they have devoted their lives to.

The remarkable new novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which leaps across centuries past and future as if different eras were separated by only a door. Why did people, who lived so briefly in this universe, contain so much time? Lina and her ailing father have taken refuge at an enclave called the Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions, among them three volumes from The Great Lives of Voyagers encyclopaedia series.

A stunning collection of short stories, newly reissued, from a Booker–shortlisted and international best-selling author. Longing, familiarity, and hope suffuse these stories as they mine the charged territory of relationships—subtly weaving in conflicts between generations and cultures...

Madeleine Thien's new novel is breathtaking in scope and ambition, even as it is hauntingly intimate. With the ease and skill of a master storyteller, 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 in the mid-20th century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in one of the most important political moments of the past century.

Four Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas. The fourth annual ALCHEMY LECTURES features award-winning fiction writers, a lauded scholar, and a prize-winning musician in an astonishing, immersive investigation of the meaning of sound in this moment in the world's soundtrack. Sound—at...

A novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door. Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China.

One starless night, Janie's childhood was swept away by the terrors of the Khmer Rouge. Exiled from Phnom Penh, Janie and her family were forced to live out in the open: cold, hungry, and under constant surveillance. Caught up in a political storm that brought starvation to millions, tore families apart, and changed the world forever, Janie lost everyone she loved. Now, three decades later, Janie's life in Montreal is unraveling.