{"title":"Books by Perry Link","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780231216760","title":"I Have No Enemies – The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo","description":"Late one night in December 2008, police arrived at the home of Liu Xiaobo—China’s leading dissident, a key figure in the prodemocracy manifesto Charter 08—and took him away. When Liu won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize as a political prisoner, the award was bestowed on an empty chair. Inside China, the regime sought to erase every trace of his existence. Liu died of liver cancer in 2017 without ever having been allowed to return home.   I Have No Enemies is the definitive biography of Liu Xiaobo, offering a meticulously researched account of the twists and turns of a remarkable life. Perry Link and Wu Dazhi explore Liu’s upbringing, immersion in classical Chinese poetry and philosophy, bold challenges to literary conformity, and involvement in democratic movements. They trace the lifelong evolution of his thinking and chronicle his persecution, incarceration, and death.   I Have No Enemies emphasizes Liu’s principled commitment to dissent and the significance of the example he set in China and around the world. Liu was a farsighted strategist whose ultimate goal was “to change a regime by changing a society.” In Tiananmen Square, he showed others how to face down armed soldiers; in daily life, he looked for ways to build a more democratic culture. A powerful record of Liu’s life and times, this book also tells the story of a generation of Chinese intellectuals who sought a better way forward.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56228809408885,"sku":"9780231216760","price":28.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780231216760_0cbad913-c86c-4f2b-a6a2-2f085ca18b90.jpg?v=1786012733"},{"product_id":"9780349114699","title":"The Tiananmen Papers","description":"\u003cp\u003eTHE TIANANMEN PAPERS, which contains documents unearthed from the guarded core of the Chinese Politburo, is the most important book on China published in decades. It reveals the highest-level processes of decision-making during the tumultuous events surrounding the terrible massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.\u003cbr\u003eDrawn from about 2,000 documents, THE TIANANMEN PAPERS have been compiled and edited as part of an extraordinary collaboration between America's most prominent China scholars and a handful of Chinese people who have risked their lives to obtain them.\u003cbr\u003eThe Chinese pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 were the longest lasting and most influential in the world. THE TIANANMEN PAPERS exposes the desperate conflict during the period among a few strong leaders, whose personalities emerge with unprecedented vividness. Its revelations of the most important event in modern Chinese history will have a profound impact not only in China, but in every country in the world that deals with China.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56286847762805,"sku":"9780349114699","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349114699_47d6fcfb-bd3f-4a31-9136-a2d5d11e8319.jpg?v=1786013798"},{"product_id":"9780674072329","title":"No Enemies, No Hatred – Selected Essays and Poems","description":"When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on December 10, 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in Jinzhou Prison, serving an eleven-year sentence for what Beijing called “incitement to subvert state power.” In Oslo, actress Liv Ullmann read a long statement the activist had prepared for his 2009 trial. It read in part: “I stand by the convictions I expressed in my ‘June Second Hunger Strike Declaration’ twenty years ago—I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.”That statement is one of the pieces in this book, which includes writings spanning two decades, providing insight into all aspects of Chinese life. These works not only chronicle a leading dissident’s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity. Liu speaks pragmatically, yet with deep-seated passion, about peasant land disputes, the Han Chinese in Tibet, child slavery, the CCP’s Olympic strategy, the Internet in China, the contemporary craze for Confucius, and the Tiananmen massacre. Also presented are poems written for his wife, Liu Xia, public documents, and a foreword by Václav Havel.   This collection is an aid to reflection for Western readers who might take for granted the values Liu has dedicated his life to achieving for his homeland.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56294092570997,"sku":"9780674072329","price":20.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674072329_bbe6f045-4e26-49cc-a6f1-92aa701c7067.jpg?v=1786015090"},{"product_id":"9781589881983","title":"Anaconda in the Chandelier","description":"\u003cp\u003eThese acerbic essays, collected from Perry Link’s decades-long career as a noted Sinologist, reveal the depth of his attachment to China and his willingness to squarely face unpleasant truths about the many ways in which ordinary Chinese people have suffered from the self-serving, erratic, and often disastrous “leadership” of the Communist Party of China.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLink's essays touch on politics, society, economy, literature, and art, but their primary focus is on the thoughts, feelings, and values of Chinese people. He lays out his values as he explains how, like many of his Chinese friends, he began with a naïve attraction to socialist ideals only to eventually feel disgust at the cynical betrayal of not only those ideals but even garden-variety ethics. His writing probes the ways “comrades” in the ruling regime have ruthlessly clung to and pursued the one value whose pre-eminence has never been in question: political power.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Anaconda in the Chandelier includes essays on Link’s “day job” interests in Chinese literature, popular culture, and language teaching at Princeton University. He also offers intellectual tribute to his teachers—both classroom teachers and several whose writing taught him how to see beneath the surfaces of things.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56419950231925,"sku":"9781589881983","price":25.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781589881983_0ed2be5f-2bb5-4a0c-9fc8-b42370425f20.jpg?v=1786022992"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-perry-link.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}