When Xiaoda Xiao was twenty years old, he tore a poster of Chairman Mao while inebriated. Several months later, Xiao was arrested in order to fulfill an absurd quota and, without trial, declared a counterrevolutionary. He was sent to a labor prison on an island in Taihu Lake, where he worked in a stone quarry. The Visiting Suit chronicles Xiao's arrest through his release from the labor prison five years later. The book, told in stories—which have appeared in The Atlantic, DoubleTake, Confrontation, and Antaeus—focus equally on Xiao's fellow inmates (a local theater director, a veterinarian, a university professor), and capture their mutual everyday struggle to survive their sentences with dignity intact. The cruelties inflicted upon the Chinese population by the government are ongoing, and The Visiting Suit provides a unique and important glimpse behind the curtain.