When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in December 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was serving an eleven-year sentence in a Chinese prison for “incitement to subvert state power.” These essays and poems not only chronicle a leading dissident’s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity.
When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in December 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was serving an eleven-year sentence in a Chinese prison for “incitement to subvert state power.” These essays and poems not only chronicle a leading dissident’s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity.
Though he is an equal in many respects to Václav Havel, who contributed a foreword to this volume, Liu is not as literary a figure. Instead, his voice is humble and inelegant, if vigorous. Liu's style reflects his enthusiastic adoption of the Internet, and his strong identification with netizens everywhere. His writing would be simply informative if his subjects were not so urgent, and the clarity of his moral stance not so gem-hard, crystal-clear, and necessary.
— Michael Autrey
Christian Science Monitor
No Enemies, No Hatred is the first English-language collection of Liu's poems and essays, including works that the Chinese government cited when convicting him in 2009. Editors' notes included in the book do an excellent job of providing foreign readers with background on some of the topics that Liu writes about...This collection begins with Liu's writings about [the Tiananmen Square] protests, including poignant poems about those who died. Elsewhere, he takes aim at both Chinese and Westerners who believe that the other's culture holds all the answers to humanity's problems...Liu's sentence ends in June 2020. It's unknown how much China's political system will have changed by then. But one thing seems certain: If the injustices that Liu has railed against are still in place, he will not be timid about speaking his mind.
— Mike Revzin
Offers a glimpse into the coruscating mind of one of China's greatest dissident thinkers...Chinese officials regularly describe Liu as a dangerous criminal who threatens the very foundations of the state. The conclusion many readers of this powerful and fascinating collection of Liu's writings will reach is that those foundations are not as strong as the Chinese government likes to portray to the outside world...Even for those unfamiliar with Chinese politics or the country's human rights record, this book should appeal because of the moving poetry and beautifully written essays...The best chance yet for those who cannot read Chinese to hear the voice of China's conscience.
— Jamil Anderlini
New York Review of Books
Bookshops are now submerged by a tidal wave of new publications attempting to provide information about China, and yet there is (it seems to me) one new book whose reading should be of urgent and essential importance, both for the specialist and for the general reader alike--the new collection of essays by Liu Xiaobo, judiciously selected, translated, and presented by very competent scholars, whose work greatly benefited from their personal acquaintance with the author.
— Simon Leys
New York Times Book Review
In No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems, the well-translated collection edited by Perry Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao and Liu Xia--Liu's wife--Liu demonstrates a considerable amount of anger while retaining his Gandhian nonviolent spirit. Taken together, his essays offer the best analysis I have read of what's wrong in the People's Republic of China.
— Jonathan Mirsky
Sydney Morning Herald
This is a book everyone should read, as Australian citizens and as human beings, because our national stake in what happens in China has become enormous and our human engagement with it must take the side of those who, like Liu, have the greatest integrity and the most generous vision of their country's future. Whether from a scenario planning or moral point of view, this man's ideas need to be a key part of how we see China...It's a brilliant collection and belongs in the great tradition going back to The Apology of Socrates and The Consolation of Philosophy.
— Paul Monk
The Australian
It is scarcely credible that the government of a country of 1.4 billion people, one of the largest economies, an emergent great power that is flexing its muscle in all directions, can be so scared of one individual, a writer whose crime is to write about what is happening in China and to disseminate his ideas online. What has [Liu] done that is so bad? Only by reading his work can we find out. Liu's colleagues outside China, Perry Link and Tienchi Martin-Liao, and Liu Xia, are to be thanked for a timely compilation in English that introduces the man and his thoughts from his early years as a literary critic at a Beijing university to his status as the new century's most famous Chinese intellectual, even while he is silenced and incarcerated in his country. It's gutsy for Harvard University Press to publish it, too. Harvard has interests in China, as do many institutions these days. Just to mention Liu Xiaobo's name is taboo for Chinese academics, and even academics outside China can be wary of discussing his work in case they offend officialdom. No Enemies, No Hatred lets us judge for ourselves. It covers a range of recent hot topics in China: the role of sex and political humor in contemporary culture, the Confucius revival, the Beijing Olympics, Hong Kong, Tibet, Obama, Jesus Christ. There's commentary on abuses that attracted grassroots protest: farmers evicted from their land, children forced into slave labor, violent crimes unpunished and covered up.
— Nicholas Jose
Publishers Weekly
Liu, the 2010 Nobel Peace laureate currently imprisoned in China for “incitement to subvert state power,” registers wide-ranging dissent against the Chinese system in these withering essays and stark poems (“From the grins of corpses/ you’ve learned/ that it is only death/ that never fails”). Included are manifestos and trial statements denouncing China’s dictatorship and calling for human rights, free speech, and democracy. Other pieces criticize the subtler corruptions of a repressive society: the frenzied nationalism of the Beijing Olympics; mass evictions and child slavery; soulless urban youth; the craze for Confucius, whom the author views as a mediocrity whose legacy is a Chinese “slave mentality”; the guilty compromises that prodemocracy leaders—himself included—make to protect themselves. Liu’s alienation comes through in his strong, if conflicted, identification with Western ideals, Madisonian politics, and crypto-Catholic religiosity (“we will have passion, miracles and beauty as long as we have the example of Jesus Christ”); it sometimes prompts overly simplistic sociopolitical linkages, as when he blames China’s contemporary culture of pornography on Mao’s long-past tyranny. Though personal and idiosyncratic at times, Liu’s ringing universalist defense of democratic rights and freedoms will resonate with American readers. (Jan.)
Kirkus Reviews
The recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize confronts the problems of closed-society China. During the Nobel ceremony in December 2010, an empty chair was placed in Oslo City Hall to honor Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, whose outspokenness not only earned him the prize but a prison term as well. The award catapulted him to international stardom, shining a penetrating light on his own imprisonment much as he had often shined light on the troubles of his country. These essays provide an up-to-date account of the country's current political and cultural climate, touching on a wide array of issues from the plight of the Chinese farmer to the eroding spirituality of Chinese youth. The essays are tempered by poems, many of which are interwoven throughout the book to provide a much-needed calming effect. Yet Liu Xiaobo's widespread appeal comes not from his poetry, but in his ability to move beyond platitudes and deal in personal stories--e.g., the tale of a local police department's gross mishandling of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl and the protests that developed soon after. Equally powerful is the author's assault on China's closed society, noting that while prostitution is technically illegal in China, thanks to sexual suppression, China is now "number one in the world." Most revealing, however, is Liu Xiaobo's understanding of the risks of speaking out. As if predicting his own future, in his 2008 essay "Imprisoning People for Words and the Power of Public Opinion," he writes, "China has a rich tradition of persecuting people for their words." Within two years he would come to learn this firsthand; as a result, others would begin to listen. For the world that knew Liu Xiaobo only for his empty chair in Oslo, this much-needed book fills the void.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9780674063112
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 1/16/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Sales rank: 439,586
File size: 589 KB
Meet the Author
Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, is a Chinese writer and human rights activist.
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Overview
When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in December 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was serving an eleven-year sentence in a Chinese prison for “incitement to subvert state power.” These essays and poems not only chronicle a leading dissident’s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity.What ...