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In a cave high in the ageless mountains of China's desolate interior, an ancient funeral singer awaits the end. From his deathbed he gives voice to the generations of villagers to whom he devoted his life's work, and four all-too-human souls whose struggles defined an era. A soldier, a peasant, a revolutionary and a politician. When revolt and reform take hold of the wartorn plains, all play their debased roles in the mythic cycle of avarice, vengeance and suffering. As his four tragedies interweave, the cracked lips of the dying sage conjure a stark vision: a retelling of the forging of the People's Republic from turbulent birth to absurd reversal whispered from its uncharted margins.

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9781910760697

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Jia Pingwa began his life as a published author in 1980 and published his first novel in 1986. His 1993 novel Ruined City was banned for explicit content and became one of the most pirated books in modern Chinese literature. Jia Pingwa went on to publish a further 11 novels and has won multiple literary prizes. Christopher Payne has co-translated the award-winning novels Decoded and In the Dark by Mai Jia, and along with his frequent collaborator, Olivia Milburn, he’s also brought Jiang Zilong’s magnum opus, Empires of Dust, to an English-language audience. Christopher holds a PhD in Chinese literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and he has spent more than a decade teaching at postsecondary institutions, most notably Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea, and The University of Manchester in the UK. In 2020 he took up a position at the University of Toronto, where he has continued to champion Chinese literature in the English-speaking world.

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