Explosions and other stories
Explosions and other stories
By Mo Yan
Edited by Janice Wickeri
1991;1993
xii + 214 pages
ISBN 962-7255-10-5
Mo Yan's writing has gained him a considerable audience — not only in China, but overseas, where he is considered one of the most talented and interesting of China's writers. The six stories presented here give clear evidence of the range and power of his art. Unsentimental portrayals of grinding poverty, forced abortion, sexual and emotional repression go hand in hand with mordant humour and fantastical flights of imagination in the fictionalized world Mo Yan creates among the wheat and sorghum fields of his boyhood home, Gaomi County. 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.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction — vii
Explosions — 1
The Old Gun — 59
Flies — 77
The Flying Ship — 95
The Amputee — 115
The Yellow-haired Baby — 135
Review(s)
Review(s)
'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.'
—Pacific Affairs
-
AUTHOR(s)
Mo Yan was born in 1956 in rural Shandong, northeastern China. At the age of twenty, he joined the People's Liberation Army. He began writing in 1981 and entered the Literature Department of the PLA Art Academy in 1984. His published works include over forty short stories and three novels. The film version of one of these, Red Sorghum, won first prize in the Golden Bear awards at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988.
-
TRANSLATOR(s)
Janice Wickeri is managing editor of Renditions magazine.