The much-anticipated first novel from the Guardian First Book Award-winning Chin
ese writer. In the provincial town of Muddy Waters in China, a young woman named
Gu Shan is sentenced to death for her loss of faith in Communism. She is twenty
-eight years old and has already spent ten years in prison.
The citizens stag
e a protest after her death and, over the following six weeks, the town goes thr
ough uncertainty, hope and fear until eventually the rebellion is brutally suppr
essed. They are all taken on a painful journey, from one young woman's death to
another. We follow the pain of Gu Shan's parents, the hope and fear of the leade
rs of the protest and their families.
Even those who seem unconnected to the
tragedy - an eleven-year-old boy seeking fame and glory, a nineteen-year-old vil
lage idiot in love with a young and deformed girl, an old couple making a living
by scavenging the town's garbage cans - are caught up in a remorseless turn of
events. Yiyun Li's novel is based on the true story which took place in China in
1979.
