Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out : A Novel

One of the Nobel Prize Winners in LiteratureIdeal for fans of Chinese Playground, We Are Party People, Death of Me, Skate with Me, A Farmer’s Life for Me, and similar worksWritten by today’s most revered, controversial, and feared Chinese novelistMo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out is a remarkable story. The absurd, real, comical, and tragic are combined into a fantastic read. The hero—or antihero—is Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his kindness to his peasants. His tale is a heart-wrenching and unique journey and completely riveting tale that shares the author’s love of a homeland caught by ills political, traditional, and inevitable. Mo Yan's new novel opens in hell on January 1, 1950, nearly two years after Mao Zedong's Land Reform Movement overturned the traditional order of rural China. For those two years, Lord Yama, king of the underworld, has submitted Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his uncommon kindness to all who worked his land, to every possible torture to make him admit the charges that led to his execution at the hands of newly empowered peasants. But even after being fried alive--the ultimate torture in hell--Ximen Nao continues to proclaim his innocence. Finally, in disgust, Lord Yama relents and allows him to return to earth, to his former landholdings in impoverished Shandong. But when he arrives there, he finds to his dismay that he has been reborn not as a man but as a donkey, and it is through this animal's eyes that he witnesses the fates of his former family, friends, rivals, and enemies. Subsequent reincarnations find him as an ox, a pig, a dog, a monkey, and finally a large-headed boy with an uncanny memory and a great gift for language. Through the earthy and hugely entertaining perspective of each of these characters--as well as of Mo Yan himself, who frequently interrupts to comment on the events--this brilliant novel narrates the past fifty years of China's tumultuous history. A tour de force of astounding sweep, filled with humor and extraordinary energy, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out is bound to become a classic of contemporary literature Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his generosity and kindness to his peasants, is not only stripped of his land and worldly possessions in Mao's Land Reform Movement of 1948, but is cruelly executed, despite his protestations of innocence. He goes to Hell, where Lord Yama, king of the underworld, has Ximen Nao tortured endlessly, trying to make him admit his guilt, to no avail. Finally, in disgust, Lord Yama allows Ximen Nao to return to earth, to his own farm, where he is reborn not as a human but first as a donkey, then an ox, pig, dog, monkey, and finally the big-headed boy Lan Qiansui. Through the earthy and hugely entertaining perspectives of these animals, Ximen Nao narrates fifty years of modern Chinese history, ending on the eve of the new millennium. Here is an absolutely spellbinding tale that reveals the author's love of the land, beset by so many ills, traditional and modern

WINNER OF THE 2012 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Today’s most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating read. The hero—or antihero—of Mo Yan’s new novel is Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his benevolence to his peasants. His story is a deliriously unique journey and absolutely riveting tale that reveals the author’s love of a homeland beset by ills inevitable, political, and traditional.

Stripped of his possessions and executed as a result of Mao's Land Reform Movement in 1948, benevolent landowner Ximen Nao finds himself endlessly tortured in Hell before he is systematically reborn on Earth as each of the animals in the Chinese zodiac.