Big Breasts and Wide Hips
丰乳肥臀
Author: Pen name: Mo Yan 莫言. Real name: Guǎn Móyè 管谟业
(First published in 1996 in Chinese; 2005 in English)
Big Breasts and Wide Hips 丰乳肥臀 is the second novel I’ve read by Mo Yan, the first being The Garlic Ballads天堂蒜薹之歌”. Both novels are set in Mo Yan’s native Shandong Province, in the village of Gaomi, but any similarities end there. The Garlic Ballads is a depiction of corruption in rural China in the early 1980s, a period when the old certainties of communism fade and unbridled market forces are unleashed.
long journey through the tumultuous history of 20th century China
Big Breasts and Wide Hips is a long journey through the tumultuous history of 20th century China: it’s a saga of endless wars, revolutions and violent political persecutions; a desperate time when bayoneting Japanese soldiers, marauding Communist and Nationalist troops, famine, starvation, murderous family infighting, corruption and a whole cast of vile characters all play their part in wreaking havoc on Gaomi village.
Shanguan Lű
The heroine is Shanguan Lű. From her birth, in the middle of a massacre during the Boxer Rebellion, her life is an incredible story of survival and the irrepressible will to live on, through some of the most desperate situations a human being may have to endure.
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