Big Breasts, Wide Hips is the second book I’ve read from Mo Yan after Red Sorghum. So now I think I will not be able to read Mo Yan for a long time. That is because after reading him, the other authors feel like they don’t know how to write in detail; they feel flat. This huge book had a significant impact on me.
Mo Yan also said: “If you want, don’t read my other books, but you have to read Big Breasts, Wide Hips. In this book, I wrote about history, war, politics, hunger, religion, love and sex.” And he writes all about them through a family. After a while, I ate, drank and suffered with them. Occasionally I read some chapters from the book to people around me; they started looking at my face in surprise. After a while, they couldn’t follow or asked me to shut up. A lot of things are happening in a few pages of this book.
You will be frustrated a. And there will bend you’ll be happy. There will be times when you lose the thread and, go back a few pages. But you’ll never want this to finish.
If you’re going to read a book by this Nobel Prize-winning Chinese author, read this book. Mo Yan is a unique author, and he must be in your library with at least one of his books. Enjoy!
Big Breasts, Wide Hips
An epic vision of China in the twentieth century by the author of Red Sorghum. On the eve of invasion by marauding Japanese troops, the Shangguan family eagerly prepare for two important arrivals: the birth of a foal to their donkey, and the birth of yet another girl to the young matriarch, in that order of priority.
Surrounded by a remorseless mother and seven sisters, each named in anticipation of his birth, the resulting boy-child becomes our ineffectual narrator, leading us through a generation of life in a rural Chinese community populated by strong women and weak husbands, bandits and government bureaucrats, hen-murdering mid-wives and philandering missionaries, in this epic Chinese picaresque from the acclaimed author of Red Sorghum.
Resplendent with the grotesque, bristling with grim humour, and visceral in its treatment of sex, violence and death, “Big Breasts & Wide Hips” is a searing vision of China in the twentieth century.
Mo Yan
Mo Yan, Wade-Giles romanization Mo Yen, pseudonym of Guan Moye, (born March 5, 1955, Gaomi, Shandong province, China), Chinese novelist and short-story writer renowned for his imaginative and humanistic fiction, which became popular in the 1980s. Mo was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Guan Moye attended a primary school in his hometown but dropped out in the fifth grade during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. He participated in farmwork for years before he started to work in a factory in 1973. He joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1976 and began writing stories in 1981 under the pseudonym Mo Yan, which means “Don’t Speak.”
While studying literature at the PLA Academy of Art from 1984 through 1986, he published stories such as Touming de hongluobo (“Transparent Red Radish”) and Baozha (“Explosions”; Eng. trans. in Explosions and Other Stories). His romantic historical story Honggaoliang (1986; “Red Sorghum”) was later published with four additional stories in Honggaoliang jiazu (1987; “Red Sorghum Family”; Red Sorghum); it won him widespread fame, especially after its adaptation into a film of the same name (1987).
In his subsequent work he embraced various approaches—from myth to realism, from satire to love story—but his tales were always marked by an impassioned humanism. In 1989 his novel Tiantang suantai zhi ge (The Garlic Ballads) was published and in 1995 so too was the collection Mo Yan wenji (“Collected Works of Mo Yan”).
Of the stories contained in the latter book, Mo himself was most satisfied with Jiuguo (1992; The Republic of Wine). The novel Fengru feitun (1995; Big Breasts and Wide Hips) caused some controversy, both for its sexual content and for its failure to depict class struggle according to the Chinese Communist Party line. Mo was forced by the PLA to write a self-criticism of the book and to withdraw it from publication (many pirated copies remained available, however).
Mo left his position in the PLA in 1997 and worked as a newspaper editor, but he continued writing fiction, with his rural hometown as the setting for his stories. He admitted that he had been greatly influenced by a wide array of writers such as William Faulkner, James Joyce, Gabriel García Márquez, Minakami Tsutomu, Mishima Yukio, and Ōe Kenzaburō. His later works include the collection of eight stories Shifu yue lai yue mo (2000; Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh) and the novels Tanxiang xing (2001; Sandalwood Death), Shengsi pilao (2006; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out), and Wa (2009; Frog).
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
