A bestseller in China, recently short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and a winner of France’s Prix Courrier International, Brothers is an epic and wildly unhinged black comedy of modern Chinese society running amok.
Here is China as we’ve never seen it, in a sweeping, Rabelaisian panorama of forty years of rough-and-rumble Chinese history that has already scandalized millions of readers in the author’s homeland. Yu Hua, award-winning author of To Live, gives us a surreal tale of two brothers riding the dizzying roller coaster of life in a newly capitalist world. As comically mismatched teenagers, Baldy Li, a sex-obsessed ne’er-do-well, and Song Gang, his bookish, sensitive stepbrother, vow that they will always be brothers--a bond they will struggle to maintain over the years as they weather the ups and downs of rivalry in love and making and losing millions in the new China. Their tribulations play out across a richly populated backdrop that is every bit as vibrant: the rapidly-changing village of Liu Town, full of such lively characters as the self-important Poet Zhao, the craven dentist Yanker Yu, the virginal town beauty (turned madam) Lin Hong, and the simpering vendor Popsicle Wang.
With sly and biting humor, combined with an insightful and compassionate eye for the lives of ordinary people, Yu Hua shows how the madness of the Cultural Revolution has transformed into the equally rabid madness of extreme materialism. Both tragic and absurd by turns, Brothers is a monumental spectacle and a fascinating vision of an extraordinary place and time. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 作者简介Yu Hua was born in 1960 in Zhejiang, China. He finished high school during the Cultural Revolution and worked as a dentist for five years before beginning to write in 1983. He has published four novels, six collections of stories, and three essays collections. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. In 2002 Yu Hua became the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious James Joyce Foundation Award. His novel To Live was awarded Italy’s Premio Grinzane Cavour in 1998, and To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant were named two of the last decade’s ten most influential books in China. Yu Hua lives in Beijing. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 媒体推荐Brothers is a big-spirited comedy of society running amok in modern China that follows two brothers riding the dizzying rollercoaster of life in a newly capitalist world. Yu Hua has created a book that will resonate with Western readers just as it dazzled - and scandalized -millions of Chinese.
When Baldy Li’s mother marries Song Gang’s father, the two boys become brothers. Although they are inseparable as children, their ambitions and personalities are very different and, as they grow into adulthood, these differences become more rather than less pronounced. Song Gang is thoughtful and serious, and puts his brother first in everything he does; Baldy Li, meanwhile, is obsessed by sex (even before he fully understands what the act involves) and an unquenchable desire to make something of himself ?a for Baldy Li plans to become a man of the world. In all senses of the word. And because Baldy Li is a man who always (well, almost always) keeps his word, he does, indeed, become successful- beyond even his wildest imaginings. In fact, as he grows older, and richer, it becomes obvious that there is just one thing missing from Baldy Li’s life, and that’s a wife with whom to share it. There is only one woman for Baldy Li, however: Lin Hong, the town beauty; Lin Hong, who just happens to be the love of Song Gang’s life…
“Underneath the stylized dialogue, the extremes of brutality and emotion, and the apparent flatness of the characters, are real people, emerging from a period of horror. They are still people who can’t risk planning very far into the future or thinking very deeply about the past. Everything they have experienced together is compressed in this vital and electric present moment” --------Nell Freudenberger
“Read Brothers, Yu Hua’s sensational, sweeping and satirical 600-plus-page novel about life in a Chinese village from the early days of the Cultural Revolution to the giddy capitalist present, and you’ll realize what’s missing from a lot of other contemporary social novels, and in particular, Tom Wolfe’s opus The Bonfire of The Vanities. Critics are already lauding Brothers by comparing it to Bonfire, but one is authentic Dickensian down and the other is serviceable fiberfill–and, in this instance, it’s not the Chinese product that’s the knockoff. . . .
Brothers is a tremendous novel in tone and historical scope and narrative technique. It extends from hardscrabble images of overwork and suffering to surreal images of gaudy cultural self-promotion, ending with the National Virgin Beauty Contest . . .
In recognition of this terrific literary achievement, I think that, instead of the Year of the Ox, this should be the Year of Yu Hua.” –Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
“Impressive . . . a family history documenting four decades of profound social and cultural transformation in China. . . . [An] irreverent take on everything from the Cultural Revolution to the capitalist boom. . . . [A] relentlessly entertaining epic.” –The New Yorker
“Waggish but merciless. . . . A consistently and terrifically funny read.” –Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Times
“A sprawling, bawdy epic that crackles with life’s joys, sorrows, and misadventures, Brothers is one of the great literary achievements of this nascent year. . . . Both ribald and elegiac, Brothers is a satire, but also a rebuke of how China, in its breathless pursuit of success, has compromised its soul.” –Renée Graham, The Boston Globe
“Yu Hu... --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.
Review Praise for Yu Hua
“Read Brothers, Yu Hua’s sensational, sweeping and satirical 600-plus-page novel about life in a Chinese village from the early days of the Cultural Revolution to the giddy capitalist present, and you’ll realize what’s missing from a lot of other contemporary social novels, and in particular, Tom Wolfe’s opus The Bonfire of The Vanities. Critics are already lauding Brothers by comparing it to Bonfire, but one is authentic Dickensian down and the other is serviceable fiberfill–and, in this instance, it’s not the Chinese product that’s the knockoff. . . .
Brothers is a tremendous novel in tone and historical scope and narrative technique. It extends from hardscrabble images of overwork and suffering to surreal images of gaudy cultural self-promotion, ending with the National Virgin Beauty Contest . . .
In recognition of this terrific literary achievement, I think that, instead of the Year of the Ox, this should be the Year of Yu Hua.” –Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
“Impressive . . . a family history documenting four decades of profound social and cultural transformation in China. . . . [An] irreverent take on everything from the Cultural Revolution to the capitalist boom. . . . [A] relentlessly entertaining epic.” –The New Yorker
“Waggish but merciless. . . . A consistently and terrifically funny read.” –Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Times
“A sprawling, bawdy epic that crackles with life’s joys, sorrows, and misadventures, Brothers is one of the great literary achievements of this nascent year. . . . Both ribald and elegiac, Brothers is a satire, but also a rebuke of how China, in its breathless pursuit of success, has compromised its soul.” –Renée Graham, The Boston Globe
“Yu Hua’s epic novel–a bestseller in his native China–is a tale of ribaldry, farce and bloody revolution, a dramatic panorama of human vulgarity. . . . In a style at once hyperrealist and phantasmagorical, [Yu Hua] conveys the feel of Chinese society as it shifts from crazily making revolution to crazily making money. . . . As China rises to prominence as a world power, its national character continues to be affected by the heritage of its violent communist revolution, and in this book we see something of how the country’s collective unconscious has been shaped. . . . Ironically, we can see a true picture of the country refracted in this funhouse mirror.” –Bei Ling, The Washington Post
“Vigorous and racy. . . . This widely-ranging and ironic portrait of modern China evokes the very feel of the place, with its popular Korean TV soaps, Eternity bicycles, factory labor, Big White Rabbit candles, neon lights and raucous music. . . . a major achievement by any standards.” –Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times
“Yu Hua is the most profound voice coming out of China today.” –Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
“Yu Hua writes with a cold eye but a warm heart and in a distinctive style that reveals a deep understanding of his subject–the everyday people caught in a sinister web of history and traditions.” –Ha Jin, author of A Free Life
“More than any other Chinese writer of his generation, Yu Hua has a profound understanding of Chinese society and the psychology of Chinese people.” –Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
“[Yu Hua] shows the persistence of human sensibility in the face of totalitarian logic. [His characters] are real people emerging from a period of horror.” –Slate --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
