1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is best known in Britain for filling the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall with tens of millions of sunflower seeds in 2010, and his prominent role in the design of Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium. After producing a series of works seeking to expose government corruption and cover-ups, including a dogged attempt to chronicle the lives of children killed in the Sichuan earthquake, Weiwei was detained without charge for 81 days in 2011. In 1000 Years of Joy and Sorrows, he presents a heartfelt history of his own experiences, and those of his father, the poet Ai Qing, who fell foul of the Maoist regime and was expelled to distant Xinjiang.