Inspiring, Thrilling, and Confused

True to life, Lai Wen’s thrilling new novel, Tiananmen Square, opens with the death, on April 15, 1989, of Hu Yaobang, a moderate member of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo. “The honest man is dead; the hypocrites live on,” proclaimed a poem that circulated at Peking University, where Lai, a fictionalized version of the author, has enrolled.