From one of China’s most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country’s meteoric economic and social transformation. Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular—“people,” “leader,” “reading,” “writing,” “Lu Xun” (one of the most influential Chinese writers of the twentieth century), “disparity,” “revolution,” “grassroots,” “copycat,” and “bamboozle”—China in Ten Words reveals as never before the world’s most populous yet oft-misunderstood nation. In “Disparity,” for example, Yu Hua illustrates the mind-boggling economic gaps that separate citizens of the country. In “Copycat,” he depicts...

From one of China's most celebrated writers: a collection of thirteen audacious and powerful stories that reveal the sorrows, joys, shifts, and constants of everyday life inside this rapidly changing country.In the masterful hands of Yu Hua, these stories form a timely snapshot of a nation, filled with the deep feeling and inimitable humor that epitomize its people: A shopkeeper confronts a child thief and punishes him without mercy. An awkward young man uses the perks of his government position to court two women at once. A hardworking couple toils all day in factories, only to discover that their college-age son is spending their money on taxi rides. With lucid language and coy wit, each of the stories explores the line between cruelty and warmth on which modern China is - absurdly, joyfully - balanced. Already a sensation in Asia, certain to win recognition around the world, Yu Hua's peerless talent is showcased here in top form.

From the acclaimed author of Brothers and To Live: a major new novel that limns the joys and sorrows of modern China--a deeply resonant contemporary fable, written with the author's hallmark sophisticated yet bawdy humor and piercing eye for the telling detail.Yang Fei was born on a moving train, lost by his mother, adopted by a young switchman, raised with simplicity and love--utterly unprepared for the changes that await him and his country. As a young man, he searches for a place to belong in a nation ceaselessly reinventing itself. At forty-one, he meets an unceremonious death, and lacking the money for a burial plot, must roam the afterworld aimlessly. There, over the course of seven days, he encounters the souls of people he's lost, and as he retraces the path of his life, we meet an extraordinary cast of characters: his adoptive father, beautiful ex-wife, neighbors who perished in the demolition of their homes. Vivid, urgent, and panoramic, Yang...

From one of China's most famous contemporary writers, who celebrated novel To Live catapulted him to international fame, here is a stunning collection of stories, selected from the best of Yu Hua's early work, that shows his far-reaching influence on a pivotal period in Chinese literature. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yu Hua and other young Chinese writers began to reimagine their national literature. Departing from conventional realism in favor of a more surreal and subjective approach inspired by Kafka, Faulkner, and Borges, the boundary-pushing fiction of this period reflected the momentous cultural changes sweeping the world's most populous nation. The stories collected here show Yu Hua masterfully guiding us from one fractured reality to another. "A History of Two People" traces the paths of a man and a woman who dream in parallel throughout their lives. "In Memory of Miss Willow Yang" weaves a spellbinding web of signs and symbols. "As the...