Classical music lovers will want to read Madeleine Thien’s novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, a new novel that catapults its narrator from Vancouver to China into a world of classical music, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square demonstrations – join us, July 9th for a live presentation and discussion with the author at ArtSpring.

What does Thien’s novel tell us about history and about art?

Currently in the 150th year since Confederation, how has the Canadian narrative shifted over time?

Let’s discuss these questions and many more with Madeleine Thien, one of Canada’s most exciting writers. She joins the Forum for a special Canada 150-themed discussion co-sponsored by the Salt Spring Island Public Library.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Giller Prize and Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2016.

Make sure not to miss this incredible discussion!

“Do Not Say We Have Nothing begins at the end, so to speak. It is a gorgeous intergenerational saga, stretching as far back at the 1940s and traversing China from Beijing in the north to rural Guangxi in the south, but Madeleine Thien’s narrator speaks to us from present-day Vancouver. She’s telling us about her father, once a brilliant pianist, who committed suicide in Hong Kong when she was just 10 years old. She’s known to some as Jiang Li-ling, or Marie, but to him, she was “Girl.

The story that emerges revolves around her father, his mentor (Sparrow the composer), and Sparrow’s cousin, the violinist Zhuli, all three of whom were studying at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at the start of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

You might not assume that three classical musicians would provide the most vivid lens for this violent political upheaval, but history tells us differently. ” David Hobbs, Globe and Mail