DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING by Madeleine Thien

The 2016 ScotiaBank Giller prizewinner is a gem of a book.  'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' takes the reader from modern day Vancouver, back to China of the 1960's through the Cultural Revolution and to the uprising at Tianamen Square.

This is not always an easy book to read.  Sometimes I found the timelines confusing and sometimes I had to struggle to work out who was who.  However, the writing is beautiful.  Every day when I picked the book up, I had to remind myself of where I was in the narrative, but whenever I put the book down my thought was, 'This is such a good book!'.  The section on the Tianamen Square uprising, in particular, was so vividly engrossing and I could imagine myself on the sidelines in the students' struggle.

I have put this book aside to read again - it just won't let me go.