Chinese · b. 1953
Ma Jian worked as a watch repairman, a painter and a propaganda photographer in Beijing before his flat was raided in 1983 during the campaign against spiritual pollution. He left the city and spent three years walking across China, from Tibet to the coast, and wrote it up as Red Dust. His story collection Stick Out Your Tongue, set in Tibet, was banned outright in 1987 and all his work has been banned in China since. He moved to Hong Kong, then to Germany, and has lived in London since 1999. Beijing Coma, published in 2008, is his account of Tiananmen from inside a paralysed body. He is refused entry to the mainland, was barred from a Hong Kong literary festival venue in 2018, and works with his translator Flora Drew, who is also his partner. He writes in Chinese and publishes nowhere in Chinese except Taiwan and Hong Kong.