Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

The war shattered their families, splitting the two apart until a brief reunion years later. He and his beloved Ani wandered the jungle fringe under the terrifying shadow of war.

As a child, Gail's father, Matthew Lim, lived in a Malaysian village occupied by the Japanese. Gail Lim, a producer of radio documentaries, is haunted by the mystery of her father's Asian past.

Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.Madeleine Thien's stunning debut novel hauntingly retells a crucial moment in history, through two unforgettable love stories. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. To order a copy for £7.64 (RRP £8.99) go to or call 03. Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, though it was the absurd laughter of the heartbroken.ĭo Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien is published by Granta. A fourth-century BCE Chinese text with author unknown, a record of geography, hydrology, animal life, plants, minerals and culture, and a book of history, observation, mythology, fables and science. The book I’m most ashamed not to have read I like living with books for a long time. I can read a book over years, without feeling a pressure to finish. Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury was the last book that made me laugh though it was the absurd laughter of the heartbrokenīetween Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949-1975. There’s an image – a single, vast boulder “shaped roughly like a throne or seat”, carried over centuries to the hidden recesses of a cave and finally lifted by storm waves above the water – that reminded me of the dignity and loneliness, the beautiful light and devastating sorrow, of my father’s life. Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places, which I read at the bedside of my beloved father as he was dying. She shows so many things, including that the novel as an art form – capable of astonishing dialogic power and polyphony, unafraid of conflicting ways of thinking – is an art form we will always need. The incompatibility can be shattering, and it remakes you.ĭoris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, feminism in all its complexity. Like Doris Lessing and Alice Munro, he writes with the seemingly incompatible qualities of passionate coldness and desperate passion. The works of Hannah Arendt and the poetry of Bei Dao.Ĭees Nooteboom’s All Souls’ Day. Philosophy, history, story, aesthetics and language beauty and warning.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien