Liao Yiwu, author of For a Song and a Hundred Songs, remembers the Tiananmen massacre, 25 years on.

‘And when people ask me why I left the industry for good, I always think back to a single moment—we had sent out a young adult novel set at a summer camp whose narrator happened to be Vietnamese, and a rejection came back with, verbatim, “We already have a book about an Asian kid at summer camp.” That was the moment, for me, when I understood I couldn’t do it.’ A conversation between publishing industry drop-outs.

Whose writing career do you most envy?