The Corpse Walker is a collection of interviews conducted between 1990 and 2008 that opens a window unlike any other onto the lives of ordinary, often outcast, Chinese men and women.

'Twenty-seven unforgettable life stories from China's seething underworld of the excluded: those who do not make history but who are condemned to suffer it. Liao Yiwu, imprisoned for four years for obstinate truth telling, is native to this underworld. The stories he gathers expose its brutality. But they also reveal its grim humour, its sacrificial devotion to family and its obdurate commitment to the autonomy of the self. These lives rebuke easy generalisations, but they leave this reader with a deepened conviction of the strength and the resilience of China and its people.' Inga Clendinnen