This novel contains the narratives of three people in a family: a husband, a wife and a son, revealing the emotional conflicts among the family members from the perspectives of each of them: the son wants to kill his father, the husband wants to kill his wife, and the mother wants to kill her son. The whole presents a reflection on the nature of contemporary families. Just as in The Day the Sun Died, Yan Lianke places himself (or someone with his name) into the narrative, making that perspective part of the novel and thus deepening the sense of metafiction. The Yan-narrator listens to the stories narrated by the three protagonists but seems to be uncertain about the authenticity of the stories, blurring the boundary between truth and fiction. The novel revolves around the Central Plains of China and again features the imagery of the Balou Mountains (a utopian metaphor), thus taking the novel beyond a mere story about a family and turning it into a discourse on the current Chinese nation.
The son speaks of his long-standing desire to kill his father, especially when the father disapproves of the son’s desire to study abroad. The husband reveals a rich woman’s request for an extramarital affair on condition that he divorce his wife; the husband even thinks about killing his wife in order to fulfil his wish of building a new house. The mother is angry with her son’s fraudulent use of his college money and the disgrace he has caused his family by getting arrested, so she often secretly curses her son to death. The last section of the book sees the family leaving town for the Balou Mountains – will the simple country life reconcile them?
‘China’s foremost living satirist.’ Financial Times
‘His talent cannot be ignored.’ New York Times
Sales
- Flower City Literary Journal China
- Ryefield Press Taiwan
- Kawade Shobo Japan
Material: Chinese text, Japanese edition