A novel set in a re-education camp for intellectuals during the late 1950s, in the era of the Great Leap Forward. The prisoners are watched by a young official, who is called the Child, and are pressed to confess, inform on one another and meet impossible production goals as famine closes in. Several figures, including a musician, a scholar and a theologian, try to record what is happening in secret writings. The book mixes realism with biblical echoes and dark satire, and it explores guilt, survival and the struggle to bear witness.