Kidnapped Children, Religious Music, and other matters

For anyone reading The Slaughter Pavilion and interested in the story of the vanishing children, you might be interested in this from the very excellent Global Voices Online. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/10/08/china-40-missing-children-parents-journey-in-beijing/      Sadly, the fiction in The Slaughter Pavilion is not without some basis.

This week, I wrote a blog for the Guardian's Comment is Free section on the banning of Western religious music from concert halls.  The ban has not been made public but is, as far as I understand, common knowledge in the concert halls of the capital. No one knows why exactly the authorities have done this, but in my view it's part of a general trend towards the left, that is, towards a more inward-looking China and increased paranoia about exchanges with the West, and fear of Christianity. You can link to my blog here (why the link mentions tibet, I do not know.) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/08/china.tibet

Also, I've had two lovely reviews for The Slaughter Pavilion in the last few days. One, by Matthew Lewin writing in The Guardian, can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/crime.roundupreviews2

And from Susanna Yager writing in The Sunday Telegraph:     http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/05/bocrime105.xml