The Tiananmen Square protests, known in China as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government declared martial law on the night of 3 June and deployed troops to occupy the square in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising.
Cui Jian is a Beijing-based Chinese singer-songwriter, trumpeter and guitarist. Affectionately called "Old Cui", he is credited with pioneering Chinese rock music. For this distinction he is often labeled the "Father of Chinese Rock".
Arthur Phillips is an American novelist. His books include Prague (2002), The Egyptologist (2004), Angelica (2007), The Song Is You (2009), The Tragedy of Arthur (2011), and The King at the Edge of the World (2020).
Pankaj Mishra FRSL is an Indian essayist, novelist, and socialist political figure. His non-fiction works include Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and A Great Clamour: Encounters with China and Its Neighbours, and has published two novels. He is a Bloomberg opinion columnist, and prolific contributor to other periodicals such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. His writings have led to a number of controversies, including disputes with Salil Tripathi, Niall Ferguson and Jordan Peterson. He was awarded the Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction in 2014.
Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Ding Zilin is a retired professor of philosophy and the leader of the political activist group Tiananmen Mothers. Ding is the mother of Jiang Jielian, one of the first student protestors killed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and ensuing crackdown.
Ma Jian is a Chinese-born British writer.
Federation for a Democratic China is a Canada based political group that advocates the democratization of China through opposition of the Chinese Communist Party and the support of human rights. It was founded on September 22, 1989 in Paris, France, following the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests.
Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi is a Malaysian writer living in London.
Douglas Anthony Cooper is a Canadian novelist living in Rome. Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times wrote that his "elliptical narrative style recalls works by D. M. Thomas, Paul Auster, Sam Shepard and Vladimir Nabokov."
The Writer and the World: Essays (2002) is a collection of essays and reportage, many previously published, spanning the 50-year career of Trinidad-born British writer V. S. Naipaul. The book contains some of Naipaul's most notable essays on post-colonial India, Trinidad, and Zaire. Originally published in the United States by Knopf, it was issued in paperback by Vintage in 2003. The book is edited and introduced by Pankaj Mishra.
In the days following the end of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, several memorials and vigils were held around the world for those who were killed in the demonstrations. Since then, annual memorials have been held in places outside of mainland China, most notably in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States.
Philip P. Pan is an American journalist, author, and International Editor at The New York Times. He previously worked as bureau chief in Moscow and Beijing for The Washington Post.
Chinese crime fiction is an umbrella term which generally refers to Sinophone literature concerned with the investigation and punishment of criminal acts. In mainland China the most popular subgenre is "detective fiction".
The Fat Years is a 2009 Chinese science fiction novel written by Chan Koonchung. First published in traditional Chinese versions in 2009 in both Hong Kong by Oxford University Press and also in Taiwan by the Rye Field Publishing Company under the title 'Prosperous Age: China in the year 2013' (盛世—中國2013年), to date it has never been published in mainland China.
A Hologram for the King is a 2012 American novel written by Dave Eggers. In October 2012, the novel was announced as a finalist for the National Book Award.
Wei Fenghe is a retired general in the People's Liberation Army who served as commander of the PLA Rocket Force, formerly known as the Second Artillery Corps. From 2018 to 2023, he was the Minister of National Defence, the first to have not come from the PLA Ground Forces and the first-ranked State Councilor in Li Keqiang Cabinet II from March 2018 to March 2023, and also the first-ranked ordinary Member of the Xi Jinping-chaired Central Military Commission.
Guo Jian is a Chinese Australian artist. His work has been exhibited and collected in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, US, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and China, including Musée de Picardie in France, Brussels Art Festival, the Art Gallery Of New South Wales, the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) and the National Gallery of Australia (NGA).
Yan Mingfu was a Chinese politician. His first prominent role in government began in 1985, when he was made leader of the United Front Work Department for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He held the position until the Politburo expelled him for his sympathies with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protestors. Yan returned to government work in 1991 when he became a vice minister of Civil Affairs.
Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India is a book by Sujatha Gidla on how India's untouchables (Dalits) struggle to overcome poverty and social ostracism due to the rigid caste system. The book deals with the humiliation and caste-based discrimination which Dalits face in India. The book also looks at the various levels of oppression faced due to caste, gender, and familial norms. Writing in The New York Review of Books, Pankaj Mishra says that the book "significantly enriches the new Dalit literature in English" and that the book is a "devastating critique" of India's independence leaders and the caste politics of the Naxalite movement in India.
