Madeleine Thien
Author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
About the Author
Madeline Thien, 26, is the Canadian born daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She live in Vancouver, BC. Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver, Canada. She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of show more British Columbia. She is the author of Certainty, Dogs at the Perimeter, and Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which won the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She also wrote the story collection Simple Recipes. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: bc writer's fest
Works by Madeleine Thien
Ricepaper Magazine: Vol 5.1 1 copy
Ricepaper Magazine: Vol 5.2 1 copy
Ricepaper Magazine: Vol 5.3 1 copy
Bundan Sonra Her Şey Biziz 1 copy
Associated Works
Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation (2017) — Contributor — 164 copies, 5 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1974
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of British Columbia (MFA|Creative Writing)
Simon Fraser University - Occupations
- short story writer
novelist - Awards and honors
- Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award (2024)
- Short biography
- Madeleine Thien is the Canadian-born daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She received the 2001 Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Award and the 1998 Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop Emerging Writer Award for fiction, and her collection Simple Recipes was named a notable book by the 2001 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.
Thien won the 2006 First-Novel Award from Amazon.ca and Books in Canada. The first novel award comes with a prize of $7,500.
She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. - Nationality
- Canada
- Birthplace
- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
- Associated Place (for map)
- British Columbia, Canada
Members
Reviews
“’A life can be long or short but inside it, if we’re lucky, is this one opening … I looked through this window and made my own idea of the universe and maybe it was wrong. I don’t know anymore, I never stopped loving my country but I wanted to be loyal to something else, too.’” (260)
Vancouver, 1991: Ten-year-old Marie and her mother have invited a guest into their home: Ai-Ming, a young woman who has fled China following the protests in Tiananmen Square. Ai-Ming tells Marie show more the story of her family in Revolutionary China – from Mao Zedong’s ascent to power, to the Cultural Revolution, and finally to the events leading to Beijing demonstrations of 1989.
China (Shanghai/Beijing) 1950s-1989: Three musicians – the genius composer Sparrow; his ethereal cousin and talented violinst Zhuli; and their best friend, the enigmatic and headstrong Kai, a gifted pianist – study at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s. Through Mao’s Cultural Revolution, they struggle, each in their own way, to remain loyal to the China they love, to each other, and to the music they have devoted their lives to. As the relentless denunciations and humiliations of contemporary society force them to re-invent both their private and their artistic selves, their decisions and their fates will reverberate through the years – and have deep and lasting consequences for both Marie and Ai-Ming.
It’s no surprise that Do Not Say We Have Nothing is sweeping the literary prize world. The novel is hauntingly intimate as well as historically ambitious – and beautifully written. For one who knew so little of Revolutionary China, I put this book down feeling better informed as well as fulfilled by a remarkable story. Thien’s characters – and the lives they lived in Revolutionary China – are unforgettable. My single suggestion for improvement is that a more ruthless editor might have made the novel a somewhat shorter one. But Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a highly recommended read! I will be following Thien to see what she does next.
_______________
Most Powerful Quote: on the emotional distance between people, even family, who survived Revolutionary China:
“People lost one another. You could be sent five thousand kilometres away, with no hope of coming back. Everyone had so many people like this in their lives, people who had been sent away … You couldn’t live against the reality of the time but it was still possible to keep your private dreams, only they had to stay that way, intensely, powerfully private. You had to keep something for yourself, and to do that, you had to turn away from reality. It’s hard to explain if you didn’t grow up here. People simply didn’t have the right to live where they wanted, to love who they wanted, to do the work they wanted. Everything was decided by the Party.” (417) show less
Vancouver, 1991: Ten-year-old Marie and her mother have invited a guest into their home: Ai-Ming, a young woman who has fled China following the protests in Tiananmen Square. Ai-Ming tells Marie show more the story of her family in Revolutionary China – from Mao Zedong’s ascent to power, to the Cultural Revolution, and finally to the events leading to Beijing demonstrations of 1989.
China (Shanghai/Beijing) 1950s-1989: Three musicians – the genius composer Sparrow; his ethereal cousin and talented violinst Zhuli; and their best friend, the enigmatic and headstrong Kai, a gifted pianist – study at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s. Through Mao’s Cultural Revolution, they struggle, each in their own way, to remain loyal to the China they love, to each other, and to the music they have devoted their lives to. As the relentless denunciations and humiliations of contemporary society force them to re-invent both their private and their artistic selves, their decisions and their fates will reverberate through the years – and have deep and lasting consequences for both Marie and Ai-Ming.
It’s no surprise that Do Not Say We Have Nothing is sweeping the literary prize world. The novel is hauntingly intimate as well as historically ambitious – and beautifully written. For one who knew so little of Revolutionary China, I put this book down feeling better informed as well as fulfilled by a remarkable story. Thien’s characters – and the lives they lived in Revolutionary China – are unforgettable. My single suggestion for improvement is that a more ruthless editor might have made the novel a somewhat shorter one. But Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a highly recommended read! I will be following Thien to see what she does next.
_______________
Most Powerful Quote: on the emotional distance between people, even family, who survived Revolutionary China:
“People lost one another. You could be sent five thousand kilometres away, with no hope of coming back. Everyone had so many people like this in their lives, people who had been sent away … You couldn’t live against the reality of the time but it was still possible to keep your private dreams, only they had to stay that way, intensely, powerfully private. You had to keep something for yourself, and to do that, you had to turn away from reality. It’s hard to explain if you didn’t grow up here. People simply didn’t have the right to live where they wanted, to love who they wanted, to do the work they wanted. Everything was decided by the Party.” (417) show less
A novel that takes place in a liminal space occupied by people who are escaping various forms of poiitical persecution as artists who have opinions or ethnicities that don't comport with the changing times. There are four strains, three belonging to historical figures. What I appreciated was the blending of fiction and fact in a narrative that undulated between those two poles. Having recently read a bio on Arendt and a bio of Spinosa, I was quite receptive to this interesting book. It's show more also very much about how important storytelling is. It provides strength during challenging times. People are always moving forward in this novel, into the unknown but carrying their memories along with them to help them endure. A smart, rich book. Full of ideas and aphorisms, the book is somehow held together by her skill as a writer. For a lesser novelist, this would have all fallen apart or never even gotten off the ground. show less
I'm going to be pushing this book to friends. Tracing two families, in particular through the friendship of Kai, Sparrow and Zhuli, through the civil war, the cultural revolution, the Tiananmen Square protests and the liberalisation of China. It sweeps across China and beyond, as exiles are sent to the far reaches of this enormous country, as well as encompassing the experiences of change in the almost unrecognisable cities. As well as the horror of the actions of the revolutionary guard show more there is also joy, such as shared company on the top of a bus, squashed in with other students.
"He watched the lowlands disappear, giving way to higher altitude and drier winds. Quilts were unrolled, thermoses opened and whips of steam plaited together and curled into the night sky. Sparrow slept under the protection of stars and a half moon..."
In case this sounds too worthy - it made me laugh as well. Unlike other stories with a contemporary narrator, I genuinely felt the connection and relevance of Marie's story too, united by a samizdat story circulated around China hand to hand.
"I leaned over the notebook and stared at the gathering of words. Chinese characters tracked down the page like animal prints in the snow.
"It's a story," Ma said.
"Oh. What kind of story?"
"I think it's a novel. There's an adventurer named Da-Wei who sets sail to America and a heroine named May Fourth who walks across the Gobi Desert..."
I stated harder but the words remained unreadable.
"There was a time when people copied out entire books by hand," Ma said. "The Russians called it samizdat, the Chinese called it...well, I don't think we have a name. Look how dirty this notebook is, there's even bits of grass on it. Goodness knows how many people carried it all over the place....it's decades older than you Li-Ling. "
I wondered: What wasn't?"
In choosing to focus on a musical family the author has been able to ask all sorts of questions about what you do when the thing that makes you you is banned, or you are told you have to do a different job. And the characters all have different responses, which feels real too.
"...the music had no beginning, it persisted, whether she was there or not, awake or not, aware or sleeping. She had accepted it all her life, but lately, she had begun to wonder what purpose it served. Prokofiev, Bach and Old Bei occupied the space that the Party, the nation and Chairman Mao occupied for others. Why was this? How had she been made differently? After her parents had been taken away from Bingpai, she had been cut into an entirely different person.
There was a man limping across the park, one hand holding a rip in his shirt, as if this unsightliness bothered him more than the blood that ran down his face."
(Do I need to say I want this one to win the Booker? ) show less
"He watched the lowlands disappear, giving way to higher altitude and drier winds. Quilts were unrolled, thermoses opened and whips of steam plaited together and curled into the night sky. Sparrow slept under the protection of stars and a half moon..."
In case this sounds too worthy - it made me laugh as well. Unlike other stories with a contemporary narrator, I genuinely felt the connection and relevance of Marie's story too, united by a samizdat story circulated around China hand to hand.
"I leaned over the notebook and stared at the gathering of words. Chinese characters tracked down the page like animal prints in the snow.
"It's a story," Ma said.
"Oh. What kind of story?"
"I think it's a novel. There's an adventurer named Da-Wei who sets sail to America and a heroine named May Fourth who walks across the Gobi Desert..."
I stated harder but the words remained unreadable.
"There was a time when people copied out entire books by hand," Ma said. "The Russians called it samizdat, the Chinese called it...well, I don't think we have a name. Look how dirty this notebook is, there's even bits of grass on it. Goodness knows how many people carried it all over the place....it's decades older than you Li-Ling. "
I wondered: What wasn't?"
In choosing to focus on a musical family the author has been able to ask all sorts of questions about what you do when the thing that makes you you is banned, or you are told you have to do a different job. And the characters all have different responses, which feels real too.
"...the music had no beginning, it persisted, whether she was there or not, awake or not, aware or sleeping. She had accepted it all her life, but lately, she had begun to wonder what purpose it served. Prokofiev, Bach and Old Bei occupied the space that the Party, the nation and Chairman Mao occupied for others. Why was this? How had she been made differently? After her parents had been taken away from Bingpai, she had been cut into an entirely different person.
There was a man limping across the park, one hand holding a rip in his shirt, as if this unsightliness bothered him more than the blood that ran down his face."
(Do I need to say I want this one to win the Booker? ) show less
Beautifully tangled
A riveting, sorrowful read. It's like being inside the main character's head while she devolves into mental illness, but the tendrils of story that cling to the reader like questing fingers reveal the horror she has endured that formed her into the broken simulacra of a woman. I know enough history of Laos and Cambodia to fill in the blanks of this literary horror tale. The plot rambles and is sometimes incoherent, and there is no resolution or happiness at the end of the show more book. show less
A riveting, sorrowful read. It's like being inside the main character's head while she devolves into mental illness, but the tendrils of story that cling to the reader like questing fingers reveal the horror she has endured that formed her into the broken simulacra of a woman. I know enough history of Laos and Cambodia to fill in the blanks of this literary horror tale. The plot rambles and is sometimes incoherent, and there is no resolution or happiness at the end of the show more book. show less
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