Sparks

Mr Johnson’s ability to evade controls and gain the trust of his subjects is evident in his compellingly written work. The result is a rare insight into the extraordinary risks that some Chinese take to illuminate the darkest corners of communism.

The Economist

An indelible feat of reporting and an urgent read, Sparks is alive with the voices of the countless Chinese who fiercely, improbably, refuse to let their histories be forgotten. It's a privilege to read books like these.

Te-Ping Chen, author of Land of Big Numbers

A revelation: this historian from overseas spent years penetrating the world of underground Chinese historians, becoming in his own right a recorder of pioneers such as Hu Jie, Ai Xiaoming, and Jiang Xue, who use text and video to record China's lost history.

Liao Yiwu, author of The Corpse Walker, God is Red and For a Song and a Hundred Songs

This compelling and highly enjoyable book will greatly enhance the general reader's understanding of the subtle counter-currents of resistance at work in Chinese society below the smooth surface of control and compliance.

Sebastian Veg, author of Minjian: The Rise of China's Grassroots Intellectuals

A powerful narrative of how the human spirit has survived the cruel repression of Maoist totalitarianism and is still doing the same against Xi Jinping's determined efforts to impose a new form of digital totalitarianism ... A must read for anyone interested in the Chinese and China.

Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies

Ian Johnson has conducted some of the most important grassroots research of any foreign journalist in China. With Sparks, he turns his attention to history - not the sanctioned, censored, and selective history promoted by the Communist Party, but the independent histories that are being written and filmed by brave individuals across the country. This book is a powerful reminder of the ways in which China's future depends on who controls the past.

Peter Hessler