Showing results by author "Madeleine Thien"

Madeleine Thien's new novel is breathtaking in scope and ambition, even as it is hauntingly intimate. With the ease and skill of a master storyteller, Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations - those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the mid-20th century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in one of the most important political moments of the past century.

One starless night, Janie's childhood was swept away by the terrors of the Khmer Rouge. Exiled from Phnom Penh, Janie and her family were forced to live out in the open: cold, hungry, and under constant surveillance. Caught up in a political storm that brought starvation to millions, tore families apart, and changed the world forever, Janie lost everyone she loved. Now, three decades later, Janie's life in Montreal is unraveling.

Longing, familiarity, and hope suffuse these stories as they mine the charged territory of relationships - subtly weaving in conflicts between generations and cultures. Madeleine Thien's characters in some way want to make amends, to understand the events that have shaped their lives. Compassionate and revealing, delicate and wise, these stories chart the uneven progress of love and lay bare the heartbreaking truths at the core of our closest bonds.

Certainty follows Gail Lim, a producer of radio documentaries in Vancouver, as she works to uncover the history of her parents' relationship and struggles to come to terms with the events that brought them together. Gail's search for the truth leads her to Amsterdam where she meets a war photographer named Sipke, who tells her the story of a woman named Ani - and in so doing, reveals valuable information that not only sheds further light on Gail's parents, but also brings Gail face to face with the complications in her own life and closer to unraveling the questions that have gripped her imagination.