Lili - Annie Wang

Lili grows up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, watching while her parents are branded as disreputable intellectuals. When they are sent out of Beijing for 're-education', Lili accompanies them and endures her own humiliations. Whatever idealism she may have had is thwarted by the oppression of daily life - she is paralyzed by cynicism, indifference, and self-loathing. But when the decades of smouldering anger and resentment borne by ordinary people suddenly ignite in 1989 in Tiananmen Square, Lili comes powerfully awake to a political and personal understanding she might never have been able to achieve otherwise. Herself noted as a 'young hooligan' and recently set free from prison, Lili embarks on an affair with an American who has a very different view of China to her, and prepares to stand, with her peers, in defiance before her oppressors.

Written with a bracing rawness and immediacy, LILI bears sharp-eyed witness to historical events by telling a story whose psychological and emotional veracity is both irrefutable and utterly compelling.

'An amazing accomplishment... beautiful, painterly images emerge through the rawness and edginess of Lili's self-loathing. There is clearly a fiendishly strong intelligence at work behind this sophisticated debut.' The Times