For a Song and a Hundred Songs

'For a Song and a Hundred Songs is a superhuman feat of memory...Inmates argue, fight, philosophise, manipulate and torment others but in all of them Liao Yiwu reveals an individual personality and voice. His writing switches from the sarcastic to the reflective, from the descriptive to the immediacy of quick-fire dialogue. His interactions with prisoners on death row...are especially poignant, as he recalls their desperate wish to live...' -- Books Now
'Yiwu's style is earthy and frank. It is painfully honest, recording how sometimes his own response to the brutality was to be occasionally weak, cruel, self-serving, or violent. But although he also records the savagery of other prisoners he shows too that there are poignant moments of tenderness and that the spark of humanity is never extinguished.' -- ANZ LitLovers
'Liao Yiwu's unflinching account of his years in the Chinese gulag rises above the merely sadistically gothic...because of his self-deprecating honesty and his poet's gift for the devastating image.' * North and South *
'Liao's book reminds us that the current prosperity in China has been hard won, and his palpable pain as he records a troubled and even tragic life is evidence of the shortcomings of art to cope with some of the harsher realities of history.' * Good Reading *