For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey through a Chinese Prison

WINNER OF THE 2012 GERMAN BOOK TRADE PEACE PRIZE

In June 1989, news of the Tiananmen Square protests and its bloody resolution reverberated throughout the world. A young poet named Liao Yiwu, who had until then led an apolitical bohemian existence, found his voice in that moment. Like the solitary man who stood firmly in front of a line of tanks, Liao proclaimed his outrage—and his words would be his weapon.
 
For a Song and a Hundred Songs captures the four bruta…