Thien, Madeleine (1974-…), is an important Canadian author. She is best known for her third novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which became the most honored Canadian work of fiction of 2016. In that year, the novel won both the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction, Canada’s two most prestigious literary awards. It was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, now called the Booker Prize, the United Kingdom’s most important literary award.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is narrated by Jiang Li-ling, a Vancouver mathematician. Jiang reflects on the life of her father, the skilled Chinese concert pianist Jing Kai, who took his own life when the narrator was 10. The action shifts place between Asia and North America, mostly between the 1960’s and the 1980’s. A major event in the novel is a political demonstration that took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, in 1989. Thousands of protesters, primarily students, gathered in the square to demand more democracy and an end to government corruption. The Chinese military attacked the demonstrators, killing hundreds of people.
Thien’s first published work was Simple Recipes (2001), a collection of short stories. She then published The Chinese Violin (2001), a children’s story. Thien’s first adult novel was Certainty (2006), a family chronicle that centers on Gail Lim, an Asian-Canadian radio writer. Certainty is told in flashbacks, beginning with Lim’s death and going back in time to explore her family’s secrets. Thien’s next novel was Dogs at the Perimeter (2011), the story of a young Cambodian girl and her family trying to survive the brutality of the Khmer Rouge Communist government in the 1970’s and the impact of those experiences later in her life.
Thien was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 25, 1974. Her father was Chinese Malaysian, and her mother was from Hong Kong, China. Thien studied literature at the University of British Columbia, receiving a B.A. degree in 1997 and an M.F.A. degree in 2001 from that school.
