ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, BookPage, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews • “With uncommon humanity, humbling scholarship, and poignant intimacy, Ai Weiwei recounts a life of courage, argument, defeat, and triumph. His is one of the great voices of our time.”—Andrew Solomon

“1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows can be seen as another act of defiance. . . . The book [is Ai Weiwei’s] effort to reclaim his country’s and his family’s dramatic past.”—The Wall Street Journal Magazine
 
“Illuminating . . .a document of conviction and activism . . . a clear-eyed account of two artists working against convention, buffeted by the whims of absurdist politics.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Poignant . . . An illuminating through-line emerges in the many parallels Ai traces between his life and his father’s. . . . Ai does not allow his own scraps to remain buried. To unearth them is an act of unburdening, an open letter to progeny, a suturing of past and present. It is the refusal to be a pawn—and the most potent assertion of a self.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This memoir is a remarkable book—and an important one. . . . 1000 Years is a breathtaking self-examination of a brave artist.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“[This memoir] is both intimate and expansive, an interrogation of art and freedom. . . . It’s a fascinating sociopolitical history, and a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world’s most significant living artists became who he is.”—Time

“Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s greatest living artists. He is a master of multiple media. His work is always thought-provoking, unpredictable, and immensely personal.”—Elton John, author of Me

“With uncommon humanity, humbling scholarship, and poignant intimacy, Ai Weiwei recounts a life of courage, argument, defeat, and triumph. His is one of the great voices of our time.”—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity and Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World

“Like the author’s brilliant installations and films, the book is an impassioned testament to the enduring powers of art—to challenge the state and the status quo, to affirm essential and inconvenient truths, and to assert the indispensable agency of imagination and will in the face of political repression.”—Michiko Kakutani, author of Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread

“This is the rarest sort of memoir, rising above the arc of history to grasp at the limits of the soul. Ai’s work is a remarkable testament to the eternal power of the simple, daring truth, underlining that an artist without the courage to speak it is merely a decorator—and a citizen without it is a subject.”—Edward Snowden, author of Permanent Record

“Ai Weiwei’s intimate, unflinching memoir is an instant classic in the literature of China’s rise, a protest against the destruction of memory, and a glorious testament to the power of free expression.”—Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

“One thousand years of joys and sorrows are here concentrated into a mere one hundred. They are years that teem with life of a startling variety. The presentation is artful and the translation exquisite.”—Perry Link, author of An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics

“Revelatory and moving . . . Ai Weiwei’s historically precise, generously candid, and deeply delving chronicle is clarion testimony to how intrinsic art is to human nature and to defining and protecting human rights.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Engrossing . . . Ai creates a vivid portrait of two generations grappling with their place in the Chinese cultural and political landscape, and gives readers a glimpse of his approach to art and the creative process. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“An extravagantly rewarding hybrid: a combination history of modern China, biography of a dissident poet and memoir by his provocateur son . . . a rousing but even-tempered call to action . . . His book is the story of an artist finding his voice.”—Shelf Awareness

“Fluid, heartfelt . . . A beautiful and poignant memoir demonstrating perseverance and the power of art.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

AI QING is regarded as one of the finest modern Chinese poets, whose free verse was influential in the development of new poetry in China.

Robert Dorsett (translator, Selected Poems) studied Chinese at the Yale-in-China Program at the Chinese University in Hong Kong. He received an M.D. from the State University of New York. He translated Wen Yiduo’s Stagnant Water & Other Poems and the memoirs of Gao Ertai, In Search of My Homeland: A Memoir of a Chinese Labor Camp, with David Pollard. Robert Dorsett has also published his own poetry in The Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Northwest Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.

Allan H. Barr (translator, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows) is the author of a study in Chinese of a literary inquisition in the early Qing dynasty, Jiangnan yijie: Qing ren bixia de Zhuangshi shi’an 江南一劫：清人笔下的庄氏史案, and the translator of several books by contemporary Chinese authors, including Yu Hua’s China in Ten Words and Han Han’s This Generation. He teaches Chinese at Pomona College in California.