Title: 天堂蒜薹之歌 (Tiantang suan tai zhi ge)
First published: 1995
Description: The peasants of Paradise County have been living a hardscrabble existence virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, until a 1987 glut on the garlic market forces them to watch the crop that is their lifeblood wilt, rot, and blacken in the fields - leading them to storm the seat of corrupt Communist officialdom in an apocalyptic riot. Against this epic backdrop unfold three intricately intertwined tales of love, loyalty, and retribution: between man and woman, father and child, friend and friend.

Railing against the chaos and destruction is the blind, almost Homeric bard, the street singer Zhang Kou, whose insistent raised voice is the conscience of his beloved land - and whose fate will mirror the country's.

Bawdy, mystical, and brawling, The Garlic Ballads portrays a landscape at once strange and utterly compelling, a people whose fierce passions overflow the rigid confines of their traditions. With this novel, China's most courageous and eloquent writer powerfully confirms his place in world literature.
Subjects: Fiction, China, fiction, Fiction, general, Translations into English, Garlic growers, Political prisoners, Farmers, Garlic, Fiction, political
Places: China
People: Yan Mo (1955-)
LC classification: PL2886.O1684 T513 1995, PL2886.O1684 T5 2001