Forum: Spoken and Unspoken

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An Open Letter to a Nameless Censor

by Murong Xuecun

Hao Qun, winner of the 2010 People’s Literature Prize (Renmin wenxue jiang 人民文学奖), is the author of five novels that explore government corruption and popular disillusionment written under the pen name Murong Xuecun. Deprived of his habitual platforms, Murong wrote an open letter to the un-named censor who silenced him, and published it on the Chinese section of the New York Times website on 20 May 2013. The translation reproduced below was uploaded to Scribd.com by an anonymous Internet user. Minor stylistic modifications have been made to the translation.