From one of China's most celebrated--and silenced--literary authors,
riveting portraits of eight Wuhan residents at the dawn of the
pandemic
When a strange new virus appeared in the largest city in central China
late in 2019, the 11 million people living there were oblivious to what
was about to hit them. But rumors of a new disease soon began to spread,
mostly from doctors. In no time, lines of sick people were forming at
the hospitals. At first the authorities downplayed medical concerns.
Then they locked down the entire city and confined people to their
homes.
From Beijing, Murong Xuecun--one of China's most popular writers,
silenced by the regime in 2013 for his outspoken books and New York
Times articles--followed the state media fearing the worst. Then, on
April 6, 2020, he made his way quietly to Wuhan, determined to look
behind the heroic images of sacrifice and victory propagated by the
regime to expose the fear, confusion, and suffering of the real people
living through the world's first and harshest COVID-19 lockdown.
In the tradition of Dan Baum's bestselling Nine Lives, Deadly Quiet
City focuses on the remarkable stories of eight people in Wuhan. They
include a doctor at the frontline, a small businessman separated from
his family, a volunteer who threw himself into assisting the sick and
dying, and a party loyalist who found a reason for everything. Although
the Chinese Communist Party has devoted enormous efforts to rewriting
the history of the pandemic's outbreak in Wuhan, through these poignant
and beautifully written firsthand accounts Murong tells us what really
happened in Wuhan, giving us a book unlike any other on the earliest
days of the pandemic.
