Howard Goldblatt Livres

Jintong, his mother, and his eight sisters struggle to survive through the major crises of twentieth century China, which include civil war, invasion by the Japanese, the cultural revolution, and communist rule in the new China.

An epic Chinese tale, "Wolf Totem" depicts the dying culture of the Mongols--the descendants of the Mongol hordes who at one time terrorized the world--and the parallel extinction of the animal they believe to be sacred: the fierce and otherworldly Mongolian wolf.

Dans un village chinois, Têtard écrit une pièce de théâtre. Il s’inspire de la vie de sa tante, une gynécologue à la fois terrifiante et fascinante, qui œuvre pour la mise en place du planning familial sous Mao. Très vite, elle s’engage dans le parti communiste, organise des campagnes d’avortements forcés. La tante de Têtard est prête à tout pour aller au bout de ses convictions politiques, malgré les terribles conséquences sur la vie des villageois.

Stripped of his possessions and executed as a result of Mao's Land Reform Movement in 1948, benevolent landowner Ximen Nao finds himself endlessly tortured in Hell before he is systematically reborn on Earth as each of the animals in the Chinese zodiac.

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 must 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 the law into their own hands, and a riot of apocalyptic proportions follows with savage and unforgettable consequences. The Garlic Ballads is a powerful vision of life under the heel of an inflexible and uncaring government. It is also a delicate story of love between man and woman, father and child, friend and friend—and the struggle to maintain that love despite overwhelming obstacles.

The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon (AKA I Am Liu Yuejin) by prize-winning Chinese novelist Liu Zhenyun is a novel of Beijing that paints a microcosm of contemporary China, dealing with classes at the two extremes: the super rich and the migrant workers who make them rich through deceit and corruption.The protagonist, Liu Yuejin, is a work site cook and small-time thief whose bag is stolen. In searching for it he stumbles upon another bag, which contains a flash disk that chronicles high-level corruption, and sets off a convoluted chase. There are no heroes in this scathing, complex, and highly readable critique of the dark side of China’s predatory capitalism, corruption, and the plight of the underclasses. A movie adaptation and TV series appeared in 2008 in China.