After a remarkable 14 applications for an exit visa over three years, Chinese author Liao Yiwu has finally been allowed to travel outside his homeland. He boarded a plane yesterday morning to attend literary festivals in Berlin and Hamburg. Yiwu, a writer lauded in many Western countries but seen as a threat to state security in China, does not see himself as a political activist but as a writer seeking to ‘tell the truth about China’, a pursuit that landed him in jail for four years. Find out more here…

Text Publishing will be releasing Yiwu’s magnificent The Corpse Walker and other true stories of life in China in May next year. It is a remarkable account of those living at the base of society where the currents of social change sweep across their worlds. Now that he’s able to travel, fingers crossed we can convince Yiwu to visit Australia in 2011 too.