Winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature
The farmers of Paradise County have been leading a hardscrabble life
unchanged for generations. The Communist government has encouraged them
to plant garlic, but selling the crop is not as simple as they believed.
Warehouses fill up, taxes skyrocket, and government officials maltreat
even those who have traveled for days to sell their harvest. A surplus
on the garlic market ensues, and the farmers must watch in horror as
their crops wither and rot in the fields. Families are destroyed by the
random imprisonment of young and old for supposed crimes against the
state.The prisoners languish in horrifying conditions in their cells,
with only their strength of character and thoughts of their loved ones
to save them from madness. Meanwhile, a blind minstrel incites the
masses to take the law into their own hands, and a riot of apocalyptic
proportions follows with savage and unforgettable consequences.
The Garlic Ballads is a powerful vision of life under the heel of an
inflexible and uncaring government. It is also a delicate story of love
between man and woman, father and child, friend and friend - and the
struggle to maintain that love despite overwhelming obstacles.
