Binding: HardcoverPage Count: 256Publisher: HarperOne ISBN#: 9780062078469
Availability: Usually ships the same business day.
Description :
Books & Culture‘s Book of the Year is Liao Yuwi’s God Is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China (HarperOne, 2011).
“Liao's coverage of Christians allows truth to shine in the darkness. That's the beauty of his writings.” —Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace PrizeThe Corpse Walker —profiles the extraordinary lives of dozens of Chinese Christians, providing a rare glimpse into the burgeoning underground world of belief that is taking hold within the officially atheistic state of Communist China. A luminous writer, and not a Christian himself, Yiwu offers a uniquely objective and insightful perspective on the position Christians occupy in mainland China, in a book that readers of Philip Jenkins’ The Lost History of Christianity as well as Peter Hessler’s Country Driving will not want to miss.
“Like nothing you have read about Christianity in China. Inspiring, beguiling, consistently surprising, with a quirky literary sensibility and a complete absence of hype.” “ God Is Red is the most wonderfully surprising report on the church in China I’ve seen, and Liao Yiwu is the best literary guide since Vergil.” -- John Wilson
“This is a mesmerizing and amazing tale of courage. Author Liao Yiwu’s story, covering even the recent past, is especially powerful because he is not himself a Christian. The reporting is brilliant and the perspective dazzling.” --David Aikman, author of Jesus in Beijing “No writer does better than Liao Yiwu in revealing the texture of daily life for ordinary people in China. His characters walk off the page and into your heart. . . . Humanity oozes from every vignette, and every detail rings true.” --Perry Link, Professor emeritus, East Asian Studies, Princeton University “It is very difficult to read Liao Yiwu’s work without being constantly reminded of Christian struggles in the ancient Roman Empire. . . . Who can tell how the story will play out this time round?” --Philip Jenkins, author of Jesus Wars “A subtle and sober account by one of the foremost banned writers of contemporary China. An irresistible read, pulsating with humanity.” --Lian Xi, author of Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China “A leading Chinese writer [provides] an insider’s look at the surging interest in Christianity within the world’s most populous nation . . . a journalistic chronicle of how Christians survived the repressive Mao era as well as a glimpse into why their numbers are rising.” --Christian Science Monitor “If you want to read one book that sums up the glory of the Christian witness under persecution and the tragic 20th-century story of China’s Christians, read God Is Red. Brilliant and immensely moving, it will, if anything can, inject new backbone into your own Christian life.” --Christianity Today “Beginning with a 100-year-old nun and ending with a recovering slacker, . . . the voices of individual believers are lively and immediate. . . . Though Liao’s subjects claim to have no interest in politics, the question of political change in China is the subtext.” --Wall Street Journal “The author, himself an object of intermittent government harassment, is a deft interviewer. Not a believer himself, Liao empathizes with the Christians he encounters. These portraits of faithful Christians are beautifully drawn, neither triumphalist nor maudlin. Suffering, but also resilience and hope, are the common lot of these believers.” --Daniel Bays, author of Christianity in China
