A Crowded Silence

What is it like to suffer from depression? As Li Lanni writes, it is worse than cancer.

A child of China’s Cultural Revolution, Li Lanni has always persevered through hardship. Despite her many health struggles, including cancer, Lanni went through life with a smile on her face until she was diagnosed with depression in 2003.

This powerful memoir, told in part through diary entries written soon after her diagnosis, follows the extraordinary story of her life, from her upbringing on communist military bases to her coming of age in the high-pressure, freewheeling commercial centre of Shenzhen. At once deeply personal and profoundly universal, this story of cancer and mental illness captures the life and times of a generation struggling for health and happiness in a rapidly changing China.