No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems

Liu, the 2010 Nobel Peace laureate currently imprisoned in China for “incitement to subvert state power,” registers wide-ranging dissent against the Chinese system in these withering essays and stark poems (“From the grins of corpses/ you’ve learned/ that it is only death/ that never fails”). Included are manifestos and trial statements denouncing China’s dictatorship and calling for human rights, free speech, and democracy. Other pieces criticize the subtler corruptions of a repressive society: the frenzied nationalism of the Beijing Olympics; mass evictions and child slavery; soulless urban youth; the craze for Confucius, whom the author views as a mediocrity whose legacy is a Chinese “slave mentality”; the guilty compromises that prodemocracy leaders—himself included—make to protect themselves. Liu’s alienation comes through in his strong, if conflicted, identification with Western ideals, Madisonian politics, and crypto-Catholic religiosity (“we will have passion, miracles and beauty as long as we have the example of Jesus Christ”); it sometimes prompts overly simplistic sociopolitical linkages, as when he blames China’s contemporary culture of pornography on Mao’s long-past tyranny. Though personal and idiosyncratic at times, Liu’s ringing universalist defense of democratic rights and freedoms will resonate with American readers. (Jan.)