Synopsis

How often do we try to bend to another destiny what is by its very nature immutable? It is the early 2000s, the era of China's global success, the Beijing Olympics, and the emergence of civil society. Zeng Jinyan attends the People's University and works as a volunteer with HIV-AIDS orphans. In rural areas, the disease has killed thousands of people who, to survive, have sold their blood in mobile clinics run by the authorities. When she meets Hu Jia, an environmental and civil rights activist, his fight for democracy becomes her fight to protect what is most dear to her. Hu Jia is under constant surveillance by the Chinese secret police, disappears for days, is mistreated, brutally beaten, and thrown in prison. Zeng Jinyan defends him, searches for him, waits for him. Even after becoming the mother of a little girl who will only know her father through a glass partition. A story of struggle and love. But where is the line between unconditional love and one's own freedom? A narrative that spans the Chinese repression leading up to the 2008 Games, the protests of the following years, and the experiences of other dissidents: Gao Zhisheng, Chen Guangcheng, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. All people who want to change the country where they were born. China, in turn, will change them. The novel is based on a true story.