The Montreal-based author has been nominated for the 2016 Man Booker Prize for her sweeping multigenerational saga, Do Not Say We Have Nothing. In it, Marie, a modern-day Vancouverite, pieces together her shattered family history, which revolves around musicians who resisted the Cultural Revolution in Mao Zedong’s China, and their children who protested Tiananmen Square in 1989. Capturing 70 years of historical tumult through family notebooks and unreliable memories, Thien is winning rave reviews for her seemingly effortless mix of the epic and the intimate.
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