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.

Cries in the Drizzle

Literature & Fiction

Yu, Hua

Contemporary

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

To Live: A Novel

Anchor

Brothers

A crisp clean softcover, no markings throughout, not an ex-lib.

Picador Paperbacks

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 become more, rather than less, pronounced as they grow into adulthood. Song Gang is thoughtful and serious; 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 - for Baldy Li plans to become a man of the world, in all senses of the word. And although Baldy Li is a man who always (well, almost always) keeps his word, so too is his brother - but even here, their differences are obvious; for while Song Gang promises to put his brother first in everything they do, Baldy Li promises himself he will capture the heart of the town beauty, Lin Hong, who just happens to be the love of Song Gang's life. Set against the brutality and violence of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, Brothers is a novel about boys becoming men, about family feuds and the ties that bind all of us, even those who refuse to be bound by mere convention or custom - because they are bound for far greater glories...

Picador

A soaring literary achievement from internationally acclaimed writer Yu Hua, whose novels are now appearing in English for the first time, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant provides an unflinching portrait of China under Chairman Mao, as a factory worke must sell his blood to overcome every crisis. Xu Sanguan is a Chinese everyman—a cart-pusher in a silk mill struggling under the cruelty and hardships of Mao’s leadership. His meager salary is not enough to sustain his family, so he pays regular visits to the local blood chief, followed by stops at the Victory Restaurant, where he pounds on the table and demands his ritual meal: “A plate of fried pork livers and two shots of yellow rice wine. And warm the wine up for me.” But fried pork livers and yellow rice wine are not enough to restore Xu Sanguan. With the country in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, his visits to the blood chief become lethally frequent and his obligations to his family press against him mercilessly. At the height of famine, the Xu family lies motionless in bed, rising twice a day to consume increasingly watery rations of corn gruel. Xu Sanguan’s wife is forced to stand on a stool in the center of town wearing a sandwich board that reads “prostitute.” Yile, his wife’s bastard son, forever haunts Xu Sanguan’s sense of honor. And when Xu Sanguan sells his blood so he can take his family out to a proper meal, he does not invite Yile, who paces the town, famished and in tears, offering himself as a son to any man who will buy him a bowl of noodles. In a series of heartbreaking reversals, Xu Sanguan decides to risk his own life to save Yile and comes to understand that in a society ravaged by suspicion, hostility, and poverty, blood money not only pays debts, but forgives them as well. With rare emotional intensity, grippingly raw descriptions of place and time, and clear-eyed compassion, Yu Hua gives us a stunning tapestry of human life in the grave particulars of one man’s days.

Chronicle of a Blood Merchant: A Novel

Literary

Pantheon

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.

Brothers: A Novel

From one of China's most acclaimed writers, his first work of non-fiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the past several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country's meteoric economic rise and social transformation. Framed by ten words or phrases common in the Chinese vernacular, "China in Ten Words" reveals as never before the world's most populous yet most often misunderstood nation. With Yu Hua's wit, insight and courage, this is a refreshingly candid vision of the 'Chinese miracle' and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a leading writer living in China today. Two of the author's novels were named in the Top Ten most influential books of the decade by Wen Hui Bao, Shanghai's biggest newspaper.

China in Ten Words. Yu Hua

Duckworth Publishing

From one of China's most acclaimed writers, his first work of non-fiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country's meteoric economic and social transformation. This is framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular "China in Ten Words" reveals as never before the world's most populous yet most often misunderstood nation. In "Disparity" Yu Hua illustrates the mind-boggling economic gaps that separate citizens of the country. In "Copycat" he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in "Bamboozle" he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. With Yu Hua's characteristic wit, insight and courage, "China in Ten Words" is a refreshingly candid vision of the 'Chinese miracle' and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.

China in Ten Words

History

Asia

Gerald Duckworth Co Ltd

'A brilliant memoir of China... beautifully narrated, carefully analytical and at times personally courageous.' Guardian A powerful, intimate look at the Chinese experience from the years of the Cultural Revolution to the present day, told through personal stories from one of China s most acclaimed authors. Framed by ten words and phrases common in the Chinese vernacular, China in Ten Words reveals as never before the world s most populous yet often misunderstood nation. Characterised by Yu Hua's trademark wit, insight, and courage, he presents a refreshingly candid vision of the 'Chinese miracle' and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a leading writer living in China. Yu Hua is the author of four novels, six collections of stories, and three collections of essays. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. In 2002, he became the first Chinese writer to win the James Joyce Award. To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant were named two of the past decade's ten most influential books in China by Wen Hui Bao, the largest newspaper in Shanghai. Yu Hua lives in Beijing.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Duckworth

To travel through these stories is to cross a landscape of stunning beauty and terrific cruelty, where expectations are subverted, where moral certainties are shattered, where gorgeously wrought surfaces beguile at the same time that acts of incredible brutality horrify. It is no wonder that Yu Hua’s stories caused a sensation when they first appeared in the 1980s. His work represents a sophisticated and often disturbing revolution in the Chinese literary tradition, reminiscent of the fiction of modernists like Kafka, Kawabata, Borges, and Robbe-Grillet, but drawing inspiration from several strains of traditional Chinese narrative as well. This is the first collection of short fiction by Yu Hua to appear in English. It takes us on a haunting and harrowing journey from classical China through the Cultural Revolution and into the new era of economic reform, exploding along the way our preconceived notions of what Chinese literature and culture are all about in the 1990s.

The Past and the Punishments: Eight Stories (Fiction from Modern China, 10)

University of Hawaii Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Yu, Hua. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Yu, Hua

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Yu, Hua. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cries in the Drizzle

To Live: A Novel

Brothers

Brothers

Chronicle of a Blood Merchant: A Novel

Brothers: A Novel

China in Ten Words. Yu Hua

China in Ten Words

China in Ten Words

The Past and the Punishments: Eight Stories (Fiction from Modern China, 10)