"A series of harrowing, unforgettable tales...Had [Liao Yiwu] not fled the country in 2011, they may never have emerged. An indispensable historical document." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) From the award-winning poet, dissident, and "one of the most original and remarkable Chinese writers of our time" (Philip Gourevitch) comes a raw, evocative, and unforgettable look at the Tiananmen Square massacre through the eyes of those who were there. For over seven years, Liao Yiwu—a master of contemporary Chinese literature, imprisoned and persecuted as a counter-revolutionary until he fled the country in 2011—secretly interviewed survivors of the devastating 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Tortured, imprisoned, and forced into silence and the margins of Chinese society for thirty years, their harrowing stories are now finally revealed in this gripping and masterful work of investigative journalism.

“Liao'scoverage of Christians allows truth to shine in the darkness. That's the beautyof his writings.” —Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010Nobel Peace PrizeChinesedissident author Liao Yiwu—the once lauded, laterimprisoned, and now celebrated author of The Corpse Walker—profiles theextraordinary lives of dozens of Chinese Christians, providing a rare glimpseinto the burgeoning underground world of belief that is taking hold within theofficially atheistic state of Communist China. A luminous writer, and not aChristian himself, Yiwu offers a uniquely objectiveand insightful perspective on the position Christians occupy in mainland China,in a book that readers of Philip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianityas well as Peter Hessler's Country Driving willnot want to miss.