And despite everything, I have not yet surrendered completely to pessimism. I still believe that truth and beauty are transcendental forces that will outlive man-made tyrannies. I hope that perhaps by the time my children reach my age, one or two of my novels might be found in a bookshop in China. More importantly, I hope that the Chinese Communist Party, that has imprisoned the minds and brutalised the bodies of the Chinese people for almost seventy years, and whose growing influence is beginning to corrupt democracies around the world, will be consigned to dusty exhibition rooms of the
...more
