In his latest novel, Mo Yan--arguably China's most important
contemporary literary voice--recreates the historical sweep and earthy
exuberance of his much acclaimed novel Red Sorghum. In a country where
patriarchal favoritism and the primacy of sons survived multiple
revolutions and an ideological earthquake, this epic novel is first and
foremost about women, with the female body serving as the book's central
metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900 and married at
seventeen into the Shangguan family. She has nine children, only one of
whom is a boy--the narrator of the book. A spoiled and ineffectual
child, he stands in stark contrast to his eight strong and forceful
female siblings.
Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman who risks her
life to save several of her children and grandchildren. The writing is
picturesque, bawdy, shocking, and imaginative. The structure draws on
the essentials of classical Chinese formalism and injects them with
extraordinarily raw and surprising prose. Each of the seven chapters
represents a different time period, from the end of the Qing dynasty up
through the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural
Revolution, and the post-Mao years. Now in a beautifully bound
collectors edition, this stunning novel is Mo Yan's searing vision of
twentieth-century China.
