DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is an intergenerational story about an extended family in China. The first generation is those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the second is their children who grow up protesting in Tiananmen Square.

The third is the present generation: Marie, who has to piece together the story of her broken family in present-day Vancouver by seeking answers to the difficult questions involving her father, and Ai-ming, the daughter of Marie’s father’s good friend.

A story of how family, art, and love survive throughout political campaigns that starved the body and the soul, Madeleine Thien’s novel won the 2016 Booker Prize. It is a paean to how creativity is a restorative tool in times of hardship, and how minor decisions made can have lasting consequences that reverberate throughout the years.