Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Thien) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[A] beautiful, sorrowful work. The book impresses in many senses: It stamps the memory with an afterimage; it successfully explores larger ideas about politics and art (the mind is never still while reading it); it has the satisfying, epic sweep of a 19th-century Russian novel, spanning three generations and lapping up against the shores of two continents…The background of Do Not Say We Have Nothing pulses with music. Ms. Thien has that rare, instinctive sense of what it's like for a person's brain to be a hostage to its inner score—the call inside these characters' heads is always louder than the call of the outside world, most fatally that of the Communist Party—and her observations about Bach and Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Debussy are some of the book's sweetest pleasures, as are her ruthless critiques of musicians.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times


A powerfully expansive novel…Thien writes with the mastery of a conductor who is as in command of the symphony’s tempo as she is attuned to the nuances of each individual instrument.
Jiayang Fan - New York Times Book Review


[A] graceful, intricate novel whose humanity threads through it like a stirring melodic line.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


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.
Guardian (UK)


Extraordinary…It recalls the panoramic scale and domestic minutiae of the great 19th-century Russian writers…A highly suspenseful drama…as courageous and far-reaching as principled resistance itself.
Financial Times (UK)


A magnificent epic of Chinese history, richly detailed and beautifully written.
London Times


A deeply profound and moving tale where music, mathematics and family history are beautifully woven together in a poetic story…Full of wisdom and complexity, comedy and beauty, Thien has delivered a novel that is both hugely political and severe, but at the same time delicate and intimate, rooted in the tumultuous history of China.
Herald (UK)


Filled with intrigue, shifting loyalties, broken families, and unbroken resistance, this novel is beautifully poetic and as carefully constructed as the Bach sonatas that make frequent appearance in the text. Thien's reach—though epic [makes]...a lovely fugue of a book.
Publishers Weekly


[An] ambitious saga explores the upheavals in Chinese politics from 1949 to the present through several generations of friends, family, and lovers whose intersecting destinies are upturned by the sweep of events.... Mythic yet realistic, panoramic yet intimate...and deeply haunting.
Kirkus Reviews