(Winner: National Book Award, 1999)
This is a story of army doctor Lin Kong who, having married the woman his parents chose, Shuyu, leaves her to care for his parents while he works in the city. Even when his parents die he feels too embarrassed to bring her to the city because she is uneducated, older and her feet are bound.
In the hospital he works at he falls for Manna Wu, a younger nurse. He cannot get a divorce and so they must wait, and wait, for eighteen years.
There is a startling blankness at the heart of this book. The tone is similar to a folk tale where the most outrageous events are treated as if they were totally normal. And so they were, as far as I can tell.
The insight into China at the height of the cultural revolution is one reason to read this book. It is a vision of a bureaucracy of Kafkaesque proportions.
