Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist known for exploring themes of trans-cultural experiences and historical legacies. She is best known for her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), which won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The book was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Folio Prize.
Born in 1974 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Madeleine Thien grew up in a multicultural household with a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother. She studied contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University before earning a Master's degree in Fine Arts with a specialization in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Thien initially pursued dance but switched to creative writing.
Thien's first book, Simple Recipes (2001), is a collection of short stories about conflicts within intergenerational and intercultural relationships. The book won the City of Vancouver Book Award, the VanCity Book Prize, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Nobel Prize laureate Alice Munro praised it as the debut of a splendid writer.
Her debut novel, Certainty (2006), follows a documentary producer searching for the truth about her father's experience in Japanese-occupied Malaysia. It won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Ovid Festival Prize. It was also a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction.
In 2011, Thien published her second novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, which centers on associates at Montreal's Brain Research Centre and their traumatic ties to the Cambodian genocide. The novel won the 2015 Liberaturpreis at the Frankfurt Book Fair and was shortlisted for Berlin's International Literature Prize.
Thien's most acclaimed work, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), follows the life of Li-Ling, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, as she becomes the keeper of a mysterious work, the Book of Records, after her father's suicide. The novel also delves into her father's and friends' lives as young musicians during China's Cultural Revolution. It was a critical success, winning the Governor General's Literary Award and the Giller Prize.
Thien has also written literary criticism, essays, and multimedia work on diverse topics such as music, human rights, and visual art. Her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Granta. Her translation work includes Fragments from The Accused by Khun Srun, collected in Out of The Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance Through the Ages.
In academia, Thien has taught literature and fiction in various countries, including Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, Nigeria, the United States, Zimbabwe, and Singapore. She was part of the international faculty in the MFA program at City University of Hong Kong and has held teaching positions at Brooklyn College.
Madeleine Thien lives in Montreal and is the common-law partner of novelist Rawi Hage. Her forthcoming book will come out in 2025.
Photo credit: X @madeleinethien
