Liao Yiwu reads from "18 Prisoners"

The Chinese writer and dissident Liao Yiwu - winner of the Geschwister Scholl Prize and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade - gives a voice to the forgotten. During his own imprisonment between 1990 and 1994, he collected the stories of fellow prisoners: political prisoners, criminals, religiously persecuted people and outsiders - people from all social classes and different phases of recent Chinese history. As a chronicler of resistance, Liao documents 18 fates that tell not only of suffering, but also of the art of survival. With literary power and harrowing clarity, an alternative view of China's history emerges. "The power of this author, who does not shy away from pain and horror and at the same time develops a sense of situation comedy and a striking tenderness, is already present in his tone", Mark Siemons, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.