This is a wildly visionary and creative novel, constantly mocking and rearranging itself and jolting the reader with its own internal commentary. This is politics as pathology. From the start, the reader must be willing to share with Mo Yan the novel's central conceit: that the five main narrators are not humans but animals, albeit ones who speak with sharply modulated human voices ... harsh and gritty, raunchy and funny. The revolutionaries' village politics are deadly; sex in the village (whether human or animal) is flamboyant and consuming. Death is unexpected and usually violent. Coincidences of plotting abound. The zaniest events are depicted with deadpan care, and their pathos is caught at countless moments by the fluent and elegant renderings of the veteran translator Howard Goldblatt. One might have thought it impossible, but each animal does comment with its own distinctive voice.
by Mo Yan, Translated by Howard Goldblatt, Hardcover, English, 540 Pages, 9.65" x 6.45"
