Liao Yiwu [ China ]

Liao Yiwu was born in 1958 in the Sichuan province in western China. When his father was charged with being a counter-revolutionary at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, his parents separated to protect the children. He was raised by his single mother, who maintained the family with odd jobs. After completing high school Liao worked in various jobs, including as a chef and as a lorry driver. At the same time his interest in literature, and especially poetry, was growing. He read Western literature from Baudelaire through Neruda to Whitman, and began writing his own poetry.
In the 1980s he became one of the most important avant garde poets in China. The majority of his poems were published in unofficial periodicals and underground anthologies. With increasing fame it became possible for Liao to publish his work in official journals. In 1987, following the publication of his vast epic »si cheng« (tr: City of Death) – a predominantly prose work which was critical of the Cultural Revolution, and the style of which recalls Saint-John Perse – he became the victim of a political campaign. But he refused to censor himself, and did not consider giving up writing. His situation had barely settled when further critical pieces began appearing in official magazines in 1989. When he once again wrote poems condemning the Chinese government crackdown on democratic movement following the Tiananmen Square massacre he was sentenced to four years in prison. In 1994, in response to international pressure, he was freed 50 days before the end of his prison sentence. When his family and friends distanced themselves from him, he made a living as a busker and took whatever jobs he could in Sichuan's capital, Chengdu. He tried without success to get published in China. Pushed in this manner to the very edges of society, he developed a new approach to writing, and distilled his experiences in »Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society« (2002). The book was published in the United States and Europe, and at a stroke made Liao one of the most famous contemporary Chinese writers.
After having gained permission to leave the country for the first time in his life, Liao went to Berlin in 2010, where he was a guest of the international literature festival berlin and the LiteraturRaum. In July 2011 Liao came back to Germany to publish his latest work »My Testimony«, in which he writes about his time in prison. His pictorial and haunting descriptions show the brutality of the conditions in jail, which make the prisoners forget what it means to be a human being.
The author has been awarded numerous literary and civil rights prizes, including the Freedom to Write Award of the Chinese P.E.N. Centre. Liao currently lives in Berlin where he will also stay in 2012, as a guest of the DAAD (tr: German Academic Exchange Service).

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