"Eight hard-hitting yet irresistible short stories" by the celebrated Chinese writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (Booklist).

"If China has a Kafka, it may be Mo Yan," says Publishers Weekly. In this collection of short fiction, the acclaimed author presents stories of characters who suffer, physically and spiritually, under the yoke of an oppressive society—the newly unemployed factory worker who hits upon an ingenious financial opportunity; two former lovers revisiting their passion fleetingly before returning to their spouses; young couples willing to pay for a place to share their love in private; the abandoned baby brought home by a soldier to his unsympathetic wife; the impoverished child who must subsist on a diet of iron and steel; the young bride willing to go to any length to escape an odious arranged marriage.

Ranging from tragedy to wicked satire, rage to whimsy, magical fable to harsh realism, from impassioned pleas on behalf of struggling workers to paeans to romantic love, these stories reveal Mo Yan to be a literary talent "as shrewd as he is captivating" (Booklist).

"Mo Yan's voice will find its way into the heart of the American reader, just as Kundera and García Márquez have." —Amy Tan, New York Times–bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club