Solitary City Balaire & Pearlu of the East

詳細資訊

These stories were written by the author while imprisoned.
From 2019 to 2020, my home was engulfed in protests and mass resistance. We lost. I lost. For my involvement in the demonstrations, I was sentenced to more than three years in prison.
In the place where I live, some basic rights that others take for granted do not exist. Here, prison does not only mean the loss of physical freedom—it means the deliberate dismantling of one’s personhood.
I was fortunate that a narrow sliver of reading freedom remained. Perhaps the censors, like machines or livestock, did not fully grasp the meaning of literature. Fiction, in particular, escaped their attention. So I began to read. Then, quietly, I began to write.
Writing and reading gave me a window in the walls—a space of freedom, however imaginary. A sanctum constructed within my mind. Slowly, line by line, a character emerged. Page by page, discarded drafts piled into stories.
No character can exist without echoing the world we know. No fiction is wholly separate from reality. All stories bear a faint shadow of the real—and this book is no exception.
The characters in this book speak in fractured memories. They burn, walk, and vanish across cities where speech is dangerous, and remembering is forbidden. Some try to survive by staying quiet. Some try to fight, and lose everything. Some turn against one another.
Each of them chooses, or believes they do.
——But in places like these, even choice fades before it’s heard.

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