Our narrator’s grandparents and father are legendary. Family members and friends tell stories of how the narrator’s grandmother helped defeat the Japanese or how his grandfather was king of bandits in Shandong Province. The story of the narrator’s family is the story of China in the twentieth centur...
Reading this was a good exercise in expanding my personal, hopefully not too xenophobic, horizons. This collection of short stories had an interesting preface by the author, a mini autobiography describing his passion and inspiration for writing. He describes his early childhood during the cultural ...
I'm officially calling it quits with this one. I've been piking it up and putting it back down for over four months now. I think it's just a case of the author's writing style not fitting with my taste. The description grabbed my attention right away. I love historical fiction featuring strong woman...
update: i just found out that The Garlic Ballads was written in 35 days. .... what? this is probably one of his toughest books, with scenes that make you both afraid and disgusted, with characters that have no humanity in them and you're still forced to acknowledge that yes! indeed! they are your ki...
You can say I've developed a pretty healthy obsession with Mo Yan's writing. So healthy that I read his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (which was beautifully crafted - and long), I watched interviews of him with subtitles, I'm going to get the movie "Red Sorghum" and watch it, just because it's after...
I will never doubt my History teacher's taste in literature. Ever. Of course, a healthy, little dose of skepticism is of a clear need, but it's going to be optional, any time he recommends any other books to me. Now, let's talk about Mo Yan's work. I'll never do him justice. I doubt any man, other t...
The book is set in 1930's hina and deals with social inequities, banditry and the Japanese invasion. It ontrasts the natural beauty of the landscape with scenes of horific violence. I have a hard time deciding what I think about this novel. I don't think that its relentless violence works as well...
I am being biased since this is a writer from my country but this is an interesting collection of really short stories, almost like the trendy flash fiction found nowadays despite being written in the 1990s. It is a collection of chinese tales translated into English and are laced with irony and hum...
Fantastic! Audible has it narrated in Swedish!
OK, yesterday I finished it. I have to give it 5 stars, but I really NEED someone to answer one question. Did the author really raise a wolf cub? This is the one thing that is terrible about historical fiction - being unsure what exactly is fiction and what is not. I know that this has no real signi...
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