The Lily Theatre is a loosely based on the childhood of the author Lulu Wang. Lian is growing up in Mao's China where bourgeois attitudes will not will not be tolerated. Lian is the child of intellectual parents, who, because of their counter-revolutionary ways, get sent to prison camps. Lian is struck with vitiligo and goes to live with her mother in one of these camps, where she is taught by China's leading scholars. Once freed she is reunited with her best friend Kim, but the strict caste system makes their friendship wrong and unacceptable in the eyes of the outsiders.
The book is a clear and stark look at the uprising of communist China. Its informative, educational, and engrossing. You really feel for Lian at times, she seems so wise even though she is a young teenager. Her views on the cultural revolution are logical but she repeatedly gets punished for expressing them. Makes you feel thankful to live in a free country like Britain.
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