To Live
by Yu Hua
One man. Every catastrophe of modern China. He survives them all.
For you if
you want to understand 20th century Chinese history through the losses of one man who just wanted to live
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Fugui is a wealthy young man who gambles away his family's land and then watches the 20th century take everything else — his parents, his son, his daughter, his wife, his son-in-law, his granddaughter — one by one, each death caused by a different historical catastrophe. Land reform. The Great Leap Forward famine. The Cultural Revolution. Yu Hua writes this as a simple story told by an old man to a stranger in a field. The simplicity is the point. History as it lands on a single body across a single lifetime. The most devastating Chinese novel on this shelf and the most honest about what the Communist Party's experiments cost ordinary people.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- China • East Asia
- Voice
- Written by a Chinese author
- Themes
- grief and losssurvival
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
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