God Is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China

When journalist Liao Yiwu first stumbled upon a vibrant Christian community in the officially secular China, he knew little about Christianity. In fact, he'd been taught that religion was evil, and that those who believed in it were deluded, cultists, or imperialist spies. But as a writer whose work has been banned in China and has even landed him in jail, Liao felt a kinship with Chinese Christians in their unwavering commitment to the freedom of expression and to finding meaning in a tumultuous society.

Unwilling to let his nation lose memory of its past or deny its present, Liao set out to document the untold stories of brave believers whose totalitarian government could not break their faith in God, including:

• The over-100-year-old nun who persevered in spite of beatings, famine, and decades of physical labor, and still fights for the rightful return of church land seized by the government
• The surgeon who gave up a lucrative Communist hospital administrator position to treat villagers for free in the remote, mountainous regions of southwestern China
• The Protestant minister, now memorialized in London's Westminster Abbey, who was executed during the Cultural Revolution as "an incorrigible counterrevolutionary"

This ultimately triumphant tale of a vibrant church thriving against all odds serves as both a powerful conversation about politics and spirituality and a moving tribute to China's valiant shepherds of faith, who prove that a totalitarian government cannot control what is in people's hearts.

“Liao'scoverage of Christians allows truth to shine in the darkness. That's the beautyof his writings.” —Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010Nobel Peace Prize

Chinesedissident author Liao Yiwu—the once lauded, laterimprisoned, and now celebrated author of The Corpse Walker—profiles theextraordinary lives of dozens of Chinese Christians, providing a rare glimpseinto the burgeoning underground world of belief that is taking hold within theofficially atheistic state of Communist China. A luminous writer, and not aChristian himself, Yiwu offers a uniquely objectiveand insightful perspective on the position Christians occupy in mainland China,in a book that readers of Philip Jenkins The Lost History of Christianityas well as Peter Hesslers Country Driving willnot want to miss.

Liao Yiwu is a Chinese author, reporter, musician, and poet. He is a critic of the Chinese regime, for which he has been imprisoned, and the majority of his writings are banned in China. Liao is the author of The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up. In 2003, he received a Human Rights Watch Hellman-Hammett grant, and in 2007, he received a Freedom to Write Award from the Independent Chinese PEN Center.

Wenguang Huang is a writer, journalist, and translator whose articles and translations have appeared in The Wall Street Journal Asia, Chicago Tribune, The Paris Review, Asia Literary Review, and The Christian Science Monitor. He also translated Liao’s The Corpse Walker. In 2007, Huang received a PEN Translation Fund grant. Born in China, he currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.