"“What happened to her books?” “They went up in smoke. Confiscated by the Red Guards, who promptly burnt them in publi…"

"We had been so unlucky. By the time we had finally learnt to read properly, there had been nothing left for us to read."

"Four-Eyes’s parents probably wanted their son to be a writer. They must have thought it would be good for him to read…"

"Picture, if you will, a boy of nineteen, still slumbering in the limbo of adolescence, having heard nothing but revol…"

"I hadn’t suspected that a tiny glimmer of hope for the future could transform someone so utterly."

"Inside, piles of books shown in the light of our torch: a company of great Western writers welcomed us with open arms…"

"I kept my door more securely locked than ever and passed the time with foreign novels. Since Balzac was Luo’s favouri…"

"I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ul…"

"Every nook and cranny of the land came under the all-seeing eye of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which had cas…"

"She said she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price."