Cries in the Drizzle
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Yu Hua’s beautiful, heartbreaking novel Cries in the Drizzle follows a young Chinese boy throughout his childhood and adolescence during the reign of Chairman Mao.
The middle son of three, Sun Guanglin is constantly neglected ignored by his parents and his younger and older brother. Sent away at age six to live with another family, he returns to his parents’ house six years later on the same night that their home burns to the ground, making him even more a black sheep. Yet Sun Guanglin’s status as an outcast, both at home and in his village, places him in a unique position to observe the changing nature of Chinese society, as social dynamics — and his very own family — are changed forever under Communist rule.
With its moving, thoughtful prose, Cries in the Drizzle is a stunning addition to the wide-ranging work of one of China’s most distinguished contemporary writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In its first English translation, the debut novel by Yu Hua (author of the subsequent novels To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant) depicts a family's life in the Zhejiang province of Maoist China during the 1970s. At both the core and outskirts of the family is narrator Sun Guanglin, a middle son who is given up for adoption and returns, five years later at age 12, after tragedy befalls his adoptive family. The narrative flits between time and space to create the landscape of Sun Guanglin's youth: his family's home burns down shortly after he returns, a local wedding takes on macabre overtones, a death in the family leads to ill-fated homespun opportunism and family loyalty is fleeting. As memories converge, the line between fantasy and reality blurs, leading Sun Guanglin to observe, "Our lives after all, are not rooted in the soil as much as they are rooted in time.... Time pushes us forward or back, and alters our aspect." Though the fractured structure has its disjointed moments, Barr's translation perfectly captures the ebb and flow of a community on the brink of change.
