Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
My Life in Prison : Memoirs of a Chinese Political Dissident, Hardback Book

My Life in Prison : Memoirs of a Chinese Political Dissident Hardback

Hardback

Out of Stock - We are unable to provide an estimated availability date for this product

Description

In 1999, leading dissident Jiang Qisheng was given a four-year sentence for inviting the Chinese people to light candles to honor the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Drawn with indignant intensity from Jiang's time in prison, his memoirs record chilling observations of the modern "civilized" Beijing jails in which he was held. While awaiting a farcical trial, he shares a cell crowded with common criminals, among them a murderer who had dismembered his victim with an electric saw.

Along with intriguing vignettes of his fellow prisoners, Jiang describes the brutal conditions they all faced: inmates led to execution with necks corded to silence them, savage fights between prisoners, and rare moments of unexpected kindness.

He describes the frequent beatings by guards, the use of the electric prod, and a dehumanizing regime aimed at humiliation and the destruction of individual personality. After he is sentenced, conditions are even worse. Prisoners, used as slave labor, become bitterly exhausted and emaciated, while facing new depths of mental degradation.

Throughout, however, Jiang retains his dignity, his detached and perceptive intelligence, and his concern for his fellow sufferers, guards included. Written in a light and ironic style, Jiang's stories of prisoners, many of whom come from the most primitive and impoverished layer of Chinese society, are related with vividness, insight, humor, and compassion.

Dismayed by their fatalistic docility, the author asks, "Where lies China's hope?

Can democracy ever take root in China?" The answers, surely, lie in the voices of those, like Jiang, who dare to speak out.

Information

Save 2%

£55.00

£53.49

Out of Stock - We are unable to provide an estimated availability date for this product
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information