Details

ISBN-10: 0857422219
ISBN-13: 9780857422217
Publisher: Seagull Books
Publish Date: 10/15/2014
Dimensions: 8.90" L, 6.00" W, 0.90" H

Pow!

Translator: Howard Goldblatt

Paperback

Price: $18.00

Overview

In this novel by the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Mo Yan, a benign old monk listens to a prospective novice’s tale of depravity, violence, and carnivorous excess while a nice little family drama–in which nearly everyone dies–unfurls. But in this tale of sharp hatchets, bad water, and a rusty WWII mortar, we can’t help but laugh. Reminiscent of the novels of dark masters of European absurdism like Günter Grass, Witold Gombrowicz, or Jakov Lind, Mo Yan’s POW! is a comic masterpiece.

In this bizarre romp through the Chinese countryside, the author treats us to a cornucopia of cooked animal flesh–ostrich, camel, donkey, dog, as well as the more common varieties. As his dual narratives merge and feather into one another, each informing and illuminating the other, Mo Yan probes the character and lifestyle of modern China. Displaying his many talents, as fabulist, storyteller, scatologist, master of allusion and cliché, and more, POW! carries the reader along quickly, hungrily, and giddily, up until its surprising dénouement.

Mo Yan has been called one of the great novelists of modern Chinese literature and the New York Times Book Review has hailed his work as harsh and gritty, raunchy and funny. He writes big, sometimes mystifying, sometimes infuriating, but always entertaining novels–and POW! is no exception.

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Reviews
"On October 11, the Chinese writer Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and two months later his new novel, Pow!, demonstrates for Americans why he deserved to win. It's a vibrant, visceral novel that is both personal and political, realistic and surrealistic, funny and shocking. The explosive title cries out –Pow!– but it is also a subtle display of narrative wizardry. . . . Mo Yan's Pow! is a pyrotechnic display of how to blow up one's personal life to mythic proportions."–Steven Moore "Washington Post"
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Details

ISBN-10: 0857422219
ISBN-13: 9780857422217
Publisher: Seagull Books
Publish Date: 10/15/2014
Dimensions: 8.90" L, 6.00" W, 0.90" H
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