To Live: A Novel
One man's mythically tragic life encapsulates the horrors of communist China in this nearly overpowering yet vivifying saga. Initially banned in China, internationally acclaimed, made into an award-winning movie, and newly translated into English, Yu Hua's close-to-the-bone tale portrays the reckless son of a wealthy landowner who gambles away the family fortune. Fugui is humbled by the loyalty of his loved ones, and comes to accept the severe hardships of his altered life, but fate has only begun its brutal work. Fugui is forcibly conscripted into the army, then, barely alive upon his release, struggles with so-called land reform and the ensuing famine. As Fugui's family die terrible, often bitterly ironic deaths and this stoic survivor makes do with less and less in an increasingly surreal world, Yu Hua, writing with masterful simplicity about the unfathomable complexities of existence, tells a galvanizing story that is at once a shattering indictment of China's ongoing nightmare and testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. A translation of Yu Hua'sChronicle of a Blood Merchantis on the way.Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved