'Illuminating ... Johnson has not only lifted a corner of the curtain which covers China's reality beyond its glittering eastern cities; he has drawn the whole curtain' The Times Literary Supplement

In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize-winning Ian Johnson describes a China caught between the desire for change percolating up from below and the ossified political structure above. He recounts the stories of three ordinary people who find themselves finding oppression and government corruption, risking imprisonment and even death. A young architecture student, a bereaved daughter, and a peasant legal clerk are the unlikely heroes of these stories, private citizens cast by unexpected circumstances into surprising roles.

Illuminating ... Johnson has not only lifted a corner of the curtain which covers China's reality beyond its glittering eastern cities; he has drawn the whole curtain. * The Times Literary Supplement *
A gripping tale. * Washington Post *
A captivating and an important study of what is happening on the ground in China today. * The News Tribune *

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who has spent most of his adult life in China, working as a correspondent for The New York Times, New York Review of Books, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of other books that also focus on the intersection of politics and civil society, including The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, and Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China.