Explosions and other stories

By Mo Yan
Edited by Janice Wickeri
1991;1993
xii + 214 pages
ISBN 962-7255-10-5

Table of contents

Mo Yan is a native of rural Shandong, the site of his fictional Gaomi County, whose history and traditions he evoked so memorably in his novel Red Sorghum. He has been hailed as a Chinese Faulkner and a magic realist in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but his stories also draw deeply on Chinese tradition and culture as well as on his own experience of the harsh life of China's countryside and his time as a PLA soldier.

His often dark vision is transformed by his deep love for his land and people, his mastery of language and the sheer intensity and exuberance of his writing.

'Like Faulkner, Mo Yan presents the reader with a vividly imagined and self-contained world teeming with life...'

—World Literature Today

' "The Old Gun" is a story of men and guns as good as any of Hemingway's.'