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Published Jan 2015
224 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Yang Fei was born on a moving train, lost by his mother, adopted by a young switchman, raised with simplicity and love—utterly unprepared for the changes that await him and his country. As a young man, he searches for a place to belong in a nation ceaselessly reinventing itself.
At forty-one, he meets an unceremonious death, and lacking the money for a burial plot, must roam the afterworld aimlessly. There, over the course of seven days, he encounters the souls of people he's lost, and as he retraces the path of his life, we meet an extraordinary cast of characters: his adoptive father, beautiful ex-wife, neighbors who perished in the demolition of their homes.
Vivid, urgent, and panoramic, Yang Fei's passage movingly traces the contours of his vast nation—its absurdities, its sorrows, and its soul. This searing novel affirms Yu Hua's place as the standard-bearer of Chinese fiction.
"Starred Review. Although the author retains his signature outlook of an absurdist new China with little regard for humanity... this latest is ultimately less graphic exposé and more poignant fable about family bonds made not of blood ties but unbreakable heartstrings. It will assuredly reward Yu's readers, familiar and new." - Library Journal
"Hua's prose has a lilting, elegiac quality that is both soothing and distant, but his characters, quite like apparitions, never fully materialize. " - Publishers Weekly
"Compelling moments and black humor go some way toward relieving the lugubrious funk of this episodic work, which might adapt well as a one-man show for John Leguizamo but falls short of being a fully realized novel." - Kirkus
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Gong Suyi
Yu Hua was born in 1960 in Zhejiang, China. He finished high school during the Cultural Revolution and worked as a dentist for five years before beginning to write in 1983. He has published four novels, six collections of stories, and three collections of essays. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. In 2002 Yu Hua became the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious James Joyce Foundation Award. His novel To Live was awarded Italy's Premio Grinzane Cavour in 1998, and To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant were named two of the last decade's ten most influential books in China in the 1990s by Wenhui Bao, the largest newspaper in Shanghai. Yu Hua lives in Beijing.
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