Madeleine Thien

(Canada, 1974) has written books including the 2001 short-story collection Simple Recipes and the 2006 novel Certainty. Her most recent novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), won various international prizes and was on the Man Booker Prize shortlist. It focuses on Li-Ling who, as a result of the suicide of her father, an emigrant who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, comes into possession of the mysterious Book of Records. Alice Munro said the following: "Thien's prose astonishes the reader with its clarity, the apparent ease with which it is written, and its emotional purity." The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature refers to Thien's work as a reflection of transcultural Canadian literature, which investigates art and politics in the Asian diaspora.