Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK “Mo Yan’s voice will find it’s way into the heart of the American reader, just as Kundera and García Márquez have.” —Amy Tan author of The Joy Luck Club From the Nobel-prize winning author of Red Sorghum and one China’s most revered writers, a novel exploring the One-Child Policy Before the Cultural Revolution, Gugu, narrator Tadpole’s feisty aunt, is a respected midwife in her rural community. She combines modern medical knowledge with a healer's touch to save the lives of village women and their babies. Gugu is beautiful, charismatic, and of an unimpeachable political background.  After a disastrous love affair with a defector leaves Gugu reeling, she throws herself zealously into enforcing China's draconian new family planning policy by any means necessary, be it forced sterilizations or late-term abortions. Tragically, her blind devotion to the Party line spares no one, not her own family, not even herself. Once beloved, Gugu becomes the living incarnation of a reviled social policy violently at odds with deeply rooted social values. Spanning the pre-revolutionary era and the country's modern day consumer society, Mo Yan's taut and engrossing examination of Chinese society will be read for generations to come.

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9780143128380

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Reviews

Praise for Frog A rich and troubling epic and a very human story... hauntingly inventive. The New York Times Mo Yan brings back the hallucinatory realism for which he s known...[Frog is] another display of Mo Yan s attractively daring approach to fiction. The Nobel committee chose wisely. The Washington Post Heavily laced with ardent social criticism, mystical symbolism, and historical realism, Mo Yan s potent exploration of China s most personal and intrusive social control programs probes the horrors and pain such policies inflict. Booklist Harrowing, haunting, poignant... Mo Yan proves himself a novelist of the highest calibre. Financial Times(UK) Mo Yan s Frog is a raw, vivid and chaotic story...the novel is a major full-length work with big ideas on a highly sensitive subject...Readers may at times flinch and wish to look away. But regardless of his politics, admirers of Mr. Mo s earlier literary offspring are likely to be equally joyful that he brought this one to term. The Wall Street Journal Goldblatt s translation is inviting, while Yan s tale deftly explores the human toll of national policy and historical forces. Publishers Weekly It's an expansive, fascinating cultural-political history. It skilfully blends high farce with social commentary, domestic drama with deeper themes Much of the novel is funny, much is sad and moving, and Yan effortlessly moves between the two registers. And you really get a sense of how China and rural Northern Gaomi (Yan's hometown) have changed, almost beyond description, from Maoist times to the current hyper-capitalistic phase. Independent (UK) There is no denying the ease and beauty of his storytelling... this is often difficult subject matter but never hard to read. West Australian Frog has that wonderful sense of flipping between the mundane and the fantastic Both heartbreaking and absurd a tragicomic tale. Adelaide Advertiser From the Hardcover edition.

Praise for Frog A rich and troubling epic--and a very human story... hauntingly inventive. --The New York Times Mo Yan brings back the hallucinatory realism for which he's known...[Frog is] another display of Mo Yan's attractively daring approach to fiction. The Nobel committee chose wisely. --The Washington Post Heavily laced with ardent social criticism, mystical symbolism, and historical realism, Mo Yan's potent exploration of China's most personal and intrusive social control programs probes the horrors and pain such policies inflict. --Booklist Harrowing, haunting, poignant... Mo Yan proves himself a novelist of the highest calibre. --Financial Times (UK) Mo Yan's Frog is a raw, vivid and chaotic story...the novel is a major full-length work with big ideas on a highly sensitive subject...Readers may at times flinch and wish to look away. But regardless of his politics, admirers of Mr. Mo's earlier literary offspring are likely to be equally joyful that he brought this one to term. --The Wall Street Journal Goldblatt's translation is inviting, while Yan's tale deftly explores the human toll of national policy and historical forces. --Publishers Weekly It's an expansive, fascinating cultural-political history. It skilfully blends high farce with social commentary, domestic drama with deeper themes...Much of the novel is funny, much is sad and moving, and Yan effortlessly moves between the two registers. And you really get a sense of how China and rural Northern Gaomi (Yan's hometown) have changed, almost beyond description, from Maoist times to the current hyper-capitalistic phase. --Independent (UK) There is no denying the ease and beauty of his storytelling... this is often difficult subject matter -- but never hard to read. --West Australian Frog has that wonderful sense of flipping between the mundane and the fantastic... Both heartbreaking and absurd... a tragicomic tale. --Adelaide Advertiser

Praise for the work of Mo Yan: Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition. -The Nobel Prize Committee Mo Yan's voice will find it's way into the heart of the American reader, just as Kundera and Garcia Marquez have. -Amy Tan author of Joy Luck Club Praise for Frog A rich and troubling epic-and a very human story... hauntingly inventive. -The New York Times Mo Yan brings back the hallucinatory realism for which he's known...[Frog is] another display of Mo Yan's attractively daring approach to fiction. The Nobel committee chose wisely. -The Washington Post Heavily laced with ardent social criticism, mystical symbolism, and historical realism, Mo Yan's potent exploration of China's most personal and intrusive social control programs probes the horrors and pain such policies inflict. -Booklist Harrowing, haunting, poignant... Mo Yan proves himself a novelist of the highest calibre. -Financial Times (UK) Mo Yan's Frog is a raw, vivid and chaotic story...the novel is a major full-length work with big ideas on a highly sensitive subject...Readers may at times flinch and wish to look away. But regardless of his politics, admirers of Mr. Mo's earlier literary offspring are likely to be equally joyful that he brought this one to term. -The Wall Street Journal Goldblatt's translation is inviting, while Yan's tale deftly explores the human toll of national policy and historical forces. -Publishers Weekly It's an expansive, fascinating cultural-political history. It skilfully blends high farce with social commentary, domestic drama with deeper themes...Much of the novel is funny, much is sad and moving, and Yan effortlessly moves between the two registers. And you really get a sense of how China and rural Northern Gaomi (Yan's hometown) have changed, almost beyond description, from Maoist times to the current hyper-capitalistic phase. -Independent (UK) There is no denying the ease and beauty of his storytelling... this is often difficult subject matter - but never hard to read. -West Australian Frog has that wonderful sense of flipping between the mundane and the fantastic... Both heartbreaking and absurd... a tragicomic tale. -Adelaide Advertiser

Author Information

"Mo Yan (literally ""don't speak"") is the pen name of Guan Moye. Born in 1955 to a peasant family in Shandong province, he is the author of ten novels, including Red Sorgum, which was made into a feature film; dozens of novellas; and hundreds of short stories. Mo Yan is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature. He has won virtually every Chinese literary prize, including the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2011 (China's most prestigious literary award), and is the most critically acclaimed Chinese writer of his generation, in both China and around the world. He lives in Beijing. Howard Goldblatt, widely recognized as one of the best translators from Chinese to English, has received the National Translation Award as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work. He lives in Colorado."

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