At Penguin’s web site, Peter Hessler, author of River Town, has this to say about this novel by the Uyghur poet:
Among our scattered glimpses of the Uyghur catastrophe in China — the digital surveillance, the mass arrests, the reeducation camps — it seems impossible to imagine the survival of any individual creative sensibility. But Tahir Hamut Izgil is a rare artist. He records in vivid detail his fear, his resourcefulness, his loss, and his survivor’s guilt — the full emotional arc of a poet in flight and exile. Even if we can’t comprehend why this tragedy is happening in Xinjiang, Tahir reminds us why it matters.
Ethnic ChinaLit 