Ai Weiwei's memoir is half a biography of his father, a poet and intellectual who lived through the communist revolution in China, and suffered in exile during the Cultural Revolution. Weiwei's reflections overlap with his father's, since as a child he lived in the same dark home. He describes how he grew into art, and gradually came to critique the government, and became an artist dissident with a large and vocal following. Ai Weiwei's 81 days in detention and four years of house arrest are a major subject of focus.

In 1984, George Orwell depicts his protagonist sparring with his captor, the intellectual and elloquent party leader, O'brien. In that exchange, Winston is poorly equiped to articulate principles of freedom, having grown up with only a dim understanding of what life outside the party could be, while O'brien runs circles around him, confounding him with twisted logic and the hopelessness of trying to find an objective reality. Ai Weiwei's real-life conversations with his interregators feel somewhat similar, in that many of his captors appear to be well educated (citing Longfellow and other literary figures) and challenge the underpinning's of Ai's work, but Ai Weiwei was much better equiped to defend himself, articulate his ideas and critique the state's abuse of power. I recall Wael Ghonim's memoir shared a similar theme in his own questioning by authorities in Cairo.

That these real-life dissedents grew up under harsh government control and still more than possess the tools to dissent is heartening.