The Story of the Wuhan Flu

Liao Yiwu’s new book comes with a contradictory subtitle—a “documentary novel”. Fact or fiction? Clever, biased infotainment, for example about global warming, has made us mistrustful of “documentaries”. However, this book deserves attention because the author skilfully weaves a fictional novel from strands of documented reality about what happened in Wuhan in early 2020. The final fifty pages and helpful footnotes by the book’s translators reveal some of the bitter factual reality behind the story, as well as Liao Yiwu’s motivation for writing the book. Much of his information derives from internet communications—often quickly erased—in the PRC.

Liao Yiwu is a prolific reporter, writer, poet and musician. Now in his sixties, he lives in Berlin. His poem “Massacre” about the suppression of the Tiananmen demonstrations earned him torture and four years of prison. Since his release he has published numerous interviews with ordinary people about official…