LRB Review of Three Mo Yan Novels

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n16/nikil-saval/white-happy-doves

Yet The Republic of Wine had a catalysing effect on Mo Yan’s career. It made him believe that he could write large, ambitious novels of the sort that many in his generation – Yu Hua, Su Tong, Wang Anyi – would write in the 1990s and 2000s. Big Breasts and Wide Hips, a family saga that runs from the turn of the 20th century up to the early post-Mao period, confirms that this capacity was beyond him. Rather than evading death and atrocity, as Mo Yan’s critics claim, the novel is overburdened by them. Filled, like a classical Chinese novel, with a huge network of characters from many families, Big Breasts and Wide Hips gets into narrative difficulty keeping up with them all against the churning historical background.

attached to: Mo Yan

Comments

# 1.   

Was Change even mentioned in the review?

l, August 26, 2013, 6:10a.m.

# 2.   

"In his otherwise evasive memoir, Change, Mo Yan lets slip that ‘with tensions mounting daily … few of us felt like going to class.’ What role he played in the movement beyond that is unclear."

Reminds me of when I used to drop references in papers during college to convince people I'd read the whole thing.

Lucas

Lucas Klein, August 26, 2013, 1:06p.m.

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