Last month's coup, with Claire Armitstead blasting off to Russia in pursuit of Yuri Gagarin, spread a little stardust over our collection of recommendations, with Dominic H hymning the "sharp, beautful, unforgettable, prose" of Venedikt Yerofeev's Brezhnev-era Inferno, Moscow Stations, GraceAndreacchi saluting Pechorin in Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time as "the Russian anti-hero at his Byronic best" and, of course, chak's reminder of a work I'm sure we're all familiar with, Alexander Plotkin's, erm, запретный плод.

But this month we're taking the World literature tour back to its roots, calling up the spirit of Diego's original invention and returning to the democratic principles on which it was first established by heading to ... China. The irony of heading to the world's mightiest totalitarian regime, which has kept a tight lid on dissent since 1989's Tiananmen Square protests, on the basis of a vote, is acute. At the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, International Pen identified 42 writers and journalists imprisoned by the regime, a situation which appears only to have worsened since, with 10 pages of International Pen's 2010 caselist taken up with Chinese writers and recent uprisings across the Arab world prompting a new crackdown.

All the more reason to celebrate both great writers from the past and those contemporary authors who are bravely creating fine work despite the commercial and political difficulties which surround them. Using the boxes below, we can assemble a list of fiction, non-fiction, poems and plays – whether written by Chinese authors or those looking at the Middle Kingdom from the outside – which can paint a portrait of life in China beyond the reach of any censor's black marker.

I'm off to recommend the excellent Zhu Wen, as well as Bi Feiyu's brutal novella Moon Opera, filling in the country – that's China – the title, the author, the translator and some indication of why they're both so great in the boxes of power down below. But while you're racking your brains over whether to suggest Li Bai or Wang Wei, remember to keep an eye on the future. After China, where next? Remember to vote for the country of your choice in the comments below. The destination of the World literature is in your hands.