The Washington Post
The epic -- and at times crude -- stories of struggle and survival in To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant offer unforgettable images of cruelty and kindness, as Yu Hua's characters are torn between their animal instincts and their humanity. What Yu Hua brings to these narratives is a steely willingness to take things too far. Both novels are pumped full of melodrama and outrage, real tears cut with flashes of violence and sarcasm.
— Michael Laris
Library Journal
Written a decade ago and originally banned in China, this deeply moving novel was made into an acclaimed film in 1994 and has since been noted as one of the most influential books to come out of China in the last decade. Set around the time of the Cultural Revolution, the novel opens with narrator Fugui describing his carefree life as a young married man, father, and womanizer. His luck quickly changes after he is left penniless by gambling. What follows is tragedy of epic proportions as Fugui endures the successive deaths of his father, mother, 13-year-old son, deaf-mute daughter, wife, son-in-law, and seven-year-old grandson. Though the work can seem grim, it is told so matter-of-factly that readers easily recognize Fugui's status as a true survivor. Like fellow Chinese writer Ha Jin, Yu details the grittiness of life under communism but places a greater emphasis upon the frailty of the human condition than upon the politics behind the given scenarios. This engaging story is one that readers won't soon forget. Highly recommended for most fiction collections.-Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A Chinese Everyman's progress from self-indulgent irresponsibility to resignation and the beginning of wisdom is briskly in a 1993 novel known in other parts of the world as the source of the highly successful film. Yu Hua's elderly narrator Xu Fugui relates to a passing "city boy" the story of how he gambled away his family's fortune, endured the post-WWII years (as both military prisoner and soldier), struggled through the early period of Mao's Cultural Revolution and the economic debacle of the Chairman's 1958 "Great Leap Forward"-and lived to bury all those he had grown to love and work alongside, and transfer his affection to the aging ox with which he ploughs his shrunken patch of land. It's a strong conception, but Berry's translation is marred by infelicitous phrasing (perhaps the author's), shapeless sentences, vacuous rhetorical questions (e.g., "Who could have known that . . ." and variations thereof recur) and fragments of American-inflected slang (e.g., "No way"). Yu Hua is an internationally celebrated author, but this English version of his work doesn't tell us why. Agent: Joanne Wang
From the Publisher
"This engaging story is one that readers won't soon forget." ---Library Journal
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"This engaging story is one that readers won't soon forget." —Library Journal
