Nearly a year has passed since the death of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Yet his widow, Liu Xia, a poet and artist who was never politically active, is still held under house arrest by a Chinese state determined to suppress Mr. Liu’s legacy. In a rare communication with the outside world, Mrs. Liu recently confided to a friend that she has nearly given up hope of being freed: “There is nothing I fear now,” she said. “If I can’t leave, I’ll just die at home. . . . Using death to defy could not be any simpler for me.”
Her...