The Corpse Walker

Liao Yiwu spent four years in Chinese prison after writing a poem about the Tiananmen Square massacre. When he was released he spent a decade interviewing people at the margins of Chinese society — a corpse walker, a professional mourner, a human trafficker, a Tiananmen survivor, a cannibalism victim from the Cultural Revolution, a Falun Gong practitioner. This collection gives the microphone to everyone the Chinese state would prefer to silence. The most democratic Chinese dispatch — not one voice but many, all from the bottom of a hierarchy that pretends its bottom doesn't exist.