Yiyun Li believes she may have been among the last of a generation of writers born into a different China to the economic powerhouse we all know today.
Now 36, the author can still recall a country gripped by the aftermath of the fear, paranoia and deprivation of the Cultural Revolution. She remembers being forced to squat in a schoolyard with her classmates and shout 'Death to the counter-revolutionary hooligans!' as four heavily bound men were paraded before them in the back of a truck on their way to execution.
Afterwards, a day-care worker known as 'Aunty Wang', a constant tormentor of the young Li, came up to her and pointed gun-shaped fingers at her head. 'You see that? If you have too much of your own will, you will become a criminal one day. Bang!' she told the child. 'And you are done.'
Fortunately Li's strong will took her in an altogether different direction to that predicted by Aunty Wang. Having dropped out of the immunology doctorate she had begun in 1997 at the University of Iowa in the US, she instead enrolled at the university's prestigious Writers' Workshop. It was there, under the tutelage of author Marilynne Robinson, that she wrote the short stories that comprise her award-winning first book, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.
When we meet, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, at which Li will read from her forthcoming first novel The Vagrants, is in full swing, as is the Beijing Olympics. It is the patriotic fervour surrounding this event and China's growing presence on the world stage that has Li questioning the impartiality of the country's next generation of authors.
'Someone reviewed my book on a Chinese website,' she explains. 'He said I was more interested in the grey areas of China. He said he thought the main theme for our generation should be heroics, such as the Olympics, or the rescues during the Sichuan earthquake - and you know, it was very interesting because that was not from an official. It was from someone living in China who thinks literature should be about great, heroic events.'