As a writer, poet, musician and dissident, Liao Yiwu draws on his own experiences of imprisonment and mistreatment at the hands of the Chinese state to criticise abuses of power and give a voice to the downtrodden and disenfranchised.

In this memoir, Liao Yiwu reflects on his own journey from imprisonment in Sichuan to his current life in Berlin, where he now works as a full-time writer. As China’s presence and influence on the international stage grows, this small book is a poignant reminder of the human cost of authoritarianism and of the power of the written word to bear witness to evil.