Man Booker Drop-In
Another of the titles on the Man Book Awards longlist will be released in the U.S. this fall. W.W.Norton is publishing Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien, making it the second award contender picked up by a US publisher since the list was announced in July (after His Bloody Project).
Norton clearly has faith in the novel, pubbing it on Oct. 11, nearly a month after the Booker shortlist announcement and just two weeks before the winner is announced on Oct. 25.
Set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the novel is a family saga of music, loss, and politics that travels in time to the Tiananmen Square protest and on to the present day.
Macleans calls it “a serious accomplishment.” The Guardian says it is “a moving and extraordinary evocation of the 20th-century tragedy of China, and deserves to cement Thien’s reputation as an important and compelling writer.” The Globe and Mail writes that the book is a “gorgeous intergenerational saga, stretching as far back at the 1940s and traversing China from Beijing in the north to rural Guangxi in the south … [cementing] Madeleine Thien as one of Canada’s most talented novelists.”
Critics compare Thien to Amy Tan, Dai Sijie, and Rohinton Mistry.
Of the 13 title longlist, only one title is not currently scheduled for publication in the U.S., Wyl Menuir’s The Many.