Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Vancouver, 1991. Marie is ten when her family gives a home to a refugee from China, barely more than a girl, who escaped after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Through the stories the guest tells, Marie, who later becomes a mathematics professor, begins to uncover the life her late father left behind and kept hidden when he came to Canada: his years as a pianist at the Shanghai Conservatory, where he studied beside the composer Sparrow and the violinist Zhuli during the upheavals of the 1960s. Moving back and forth in time, the novel follows two sisters and their families through the redistribution of land, re-education camps, the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution up to 1989, tracing how music, loyalty and resistance survive across generations.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Family, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Canada, China, Hong Kong SAR China

First published

2016

Author's age

42 when first published

ISBN

9781783782666 (Granta Books, United Kingdom)

9780345810427 (Knopf Canada, Canada)

9780393609882 (W. W. Norton & Company, United States)

9780393354720 (W. W. Norton & Company, United States)

9781803510248 (Granta Books, United Kingdom)

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