Midnight's Gate

Midnight’s Gate, by Bei Dao [Beidao]; Translated from the Chinese by Matthew Fryslie; Edited by Christopher Mattison. New York: New Directions Publishing, 2005. Originally published collaboratively by the International Institute of Modern Letters, with New Directions Publishing.

First translation of twenty autobiographical essays from Chinese into English. The essays form a travelogue of the experiences of dissident Chinese poet Bei Dao, who has lived in seven different countries since his exile from China in 1989. Called "one of the great poets of our time," in Midnight’s Gate, Bei Dao combines poetic precision with the reportorial persona of a diarist.