Ma Jian with Flora Drew June 20, 2009

Ma Jian's Beijing Coma, winner of the T. R. Fyvel Index on Censorship Award and shortlisted for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, is a seminal novel about the Tiananmen Square protests. Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, has called Ma's 'one of the most important and courageous voices in Chinese literature'. Having moved to Hong Kong in 1987, he continued to travel back to China to support the pro-democracy activists, but his short collection about Tibet, Stick Out Your Tongue, prompted the Chinese government to ban his work and send him into exile. His wife, Flora Drew, whose English translations of his books have been highly praised, lives with him and their children in London.

All tickets £8 per event, available online or by calling +44 (0)20 7209 1141.

Concessions: £5, for LRB subscribers, Friends of the British Museum, students and OAPs (concessions available from the Bookshop or by phone only).

Supported by:

* The British Museum
* Arts Council England
* The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

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