FANZINE

The Prison Suit: Incarceration during China’s Cultural Revolution

02.16.11

As a 20-year-old, Xiaoda Xiao drunkenly ripped a poster of Mao off the wall and used it to mop up his spilled drink. Without a trial he was sent to a prison where he spent the next five years working in a gravel quarry. The Prison Suit describes this time through interconnected essays, each one focused on a different topic or fellow prisoner. Egor Lazebnik reviews the book, both as part of the genre of prison literature and as a part of history.