The Garlic Ballads: A Novel - Softcover

Mo, Yan; Goldblatt, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559707755 ISBN 13: 9781559707756

Publisher: Arcade Pub, 2006

Synopsis

Now back in print, this epic novel of beauty and brutality, set in a landscape at once strange and alluring, paints a portrait of a people whose fierce passions break the rigid confines of their ancient traditions. The farmers of Paradise County have been leading a hardscrabble life unchanged for generations. The Communist government has encouraged them to plant garlic, but selling the crop is not as simple as they believed. Warehouses fill up, taxes skyrocket, and government officials maltreat even those who have traveled for days to sell their harvest. A surplus on the garlic market ensues, and the farmers watch in horror as their crops wither and rot in the fields. Families are destroyed by the random imprisonment of young and old for supposed crimes against the state. The prisoners languish in horrifying conditions in their cells, with only their strength of character and thoughts of their loved ones to save them from madness. Meanwhile, a blind minstrel incites the masses to take...

About this title

Product Description:

Exploited by a Chinese communist government that has set impossibly high taxes and encouraged them to grow garlic at surplus levels, the farmers of Paradise County find their lives and families devastated by trumped-up criminal charges, unsellable crops, and an apocalyptic riot. Reprint.

Review:

"* 'Mo Yan deserves a place in world literature... His voice will find its way into the heart of the reader, just as Kundera and Garcia Marquez have' - Amy Tan * 'If I were to choose a Nobel laureate, it would be Mo Yan' - Kenzaburo Oe, 1994 Nobel Laureate for Literature * 'Raw, brilliant, eventful... A tale full of seething vitality' - New York Times"

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Pub
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1559707755
• ISBN 13: 9781559707756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 290