廖亦武：瑞典書評和瑞典出版商的信（中英文）Swedish book reviews and letter from Swedish publishers

中文在后

Swedish book reviews and letter from Swedish publishers

In the past few days, a repressed and five-year-old covid memory came to light.

REVIEW. Do you remember COVID-19? Almost exactly five years ago, the first person on Swedish soil died from the virus. It would be a while before panic set in, and even longer before we promised each other never again to let the working pillars of society crawl on their knees. And never again would elderly care become a death trap.

Did the virus originate from the animal market in Wuhan, or did it slip out of the laboratory in the same city? Was the infection asymptomatic?

So it is a bit of a gamble by Lindskog’s publishing house to publish Liao Yiwu’s “Wuhan”. The book, subtitled “A Documentary Novel”, was written during the first year of the pandemic. Its attempt to locate the pandemic’s ground zero in scientists’ manipulations of the SARS virus makes it a bit long-winded in places. The time for patience with deep dives into the genetic origins of the virus is over.

But it deserves its readers. Reading “Wuhan” is like being thrown back to the worst days of the pandemic, and at times like stepping into the Chinese nightmare.

The one where hospitals have long been full but no one is allowed to talk about the virus. Where those who lack money have to settle for an orange peel instead of a face mask, and where people would rather kill themselves than go home to their small homes and infect the rest of the family.

Power everywhere. The one that monitors every step a person takes, vacuuming chat groups for the slightest sign of disobedience. The one that nails apartment doors shut and uses friends as bait when it comes for you. “The emperor’s defense is a net without meshes,” as Liao Yiwo notes in an apt metaphor.

In prison, he was tortured, the abuse driving him to several suicide attempts.

Author Liao Yiwu knows more about the Chinese dictatorship than many. In 1990, he was sentenced to four years in prison after recording a poem about the Tiananmen Square massacre on cassette tape. In prison, he was tortured and the abuse drove him to several suicide attempts. In the years that followed, he lived as an outcast, occasionally homeless, but all the while he created a Chinese counter-narrative from the interviews he conducted with people on the fringes of society.

In 2011, he crossed the border into Vietnam and now lives in forced exile in Germany.

The sprawling mix of poem, pamphlet and essay that is ‘Wuhan’ is not only a reminder that the struggle for prisoners of conscience like Gui Minhai – whose example is featured in the book – is important. It is also an effective antidote to any delusion that a dictatorship can be negotiated with on normal terms.

Liao Yiwu reminds us that the trade deal with China triumphantly concluded by Donald Trump in 2019 was in fact a way for the regime to take control of Hong Kong.

The figure of speech he cites to describe the tactic makes “Wuhan” eerily topical:

DOCUMENTARY NOVEL
LIAO YIWU
Wuhan
Translation from English Sissel Almgren