"In March 2012 I met Torbjorn Loden, the Swedish professor of Chinese language and culture, in Hong Kong. He told me t…"

"I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful plac…"

"Anything negative about the country or the regime will be rapidly erased from the collective memory. This memory dele…"

"Yet, just as in any kindergarten, there are always a few naughty children who don't like to be told what to do. There…"

"Reality is much more absurd and complex than any fiction."

"“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."