Сорок одна хлопушка

by Mo Yan, Мо Янь

Повествователь, сказочник, мифотворец, сатирик, мастер аллюзий и настоящий галлюциногенный реалист… Все это — Мо Янь, один из величайших писателей современности, знаменитый китайский романист, который в 2012 году был удостоен Нобелевской премии по литературе. «Сорок одна хлопушка» на русском языке издается впервые и повествует о диковинном китайском городе, в котором все без ума от мяса. Девятнадцатилетний Ло Сяотун рассказывает старому монаху, а заодно и нам, истории из своей жизни и жизней других горожан, и чем дальше, тем глубже заводит нас в дебри и тайны этого фантасмагорического городка, который на самом деле является лишь аллегорическим отражением современного Китая.

Genres: China, Fiction, Chinese Literature, Asia, Historical Fiction, Nobel Prize, Novels

544 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Modern Chinese author, in the western world most known for his novel Red Sorghum (which was turned into a movie by the same title). Often described as the Chinese Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.

Mo Yan (莫言) is a pen name and means don't speak. His real name is Guan Moye (simplified Chinese: 管谟业; traditional Chinese: 管謨業; pinyin: Guǎn Móyè).

He has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 for his work which "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". Among the works highlighted by the Nobel judges were Red Sorghum (1987) and Big Breasts & Wide Hips (2004), as well as The Garlic Ballads.

Chinese version: 莫言

Reviews

[amapola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ma a uno che raccontando l’infimo (corruzione, tradimento, crudeltà, ingiustizia, violenza, passioni, rancori…) lo trasforma in epica e poesia posso dargli meno di quattro stelle?
A uno che nella narrazione usa tutti i registri possibili e immaginabili (drammatico, tragico, satirico, grottesco, e perfino onirico e fantastico) posso dargli meno di quattro stelle?
È possibile che uno scrittore così lontano (per origine, cultura, storia, educazione, sensibilità…) possa sentirlo così vicino, così simile a me? Questo è il mistero e l’incanto della Letteratura.
Mo Yan è uno scrittore straordinario, uno dei Premi Nobel più meritati degli ultimi anni.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

So nice to finally encounter a Nobel I can get along with.





——————
“I have been reading all over the place. [...] ; Mo Yan's POW! (like reading a contemporary Rabelais!);" -- Rikki Ducornet, Verbivoracious Festschrift Volume Four: Rikki Ducornet (217).

235 Ratings · 47 Reviews --> about the same numbers for Rikki's own Rabelasiana.*




* but perhaps Mo Yan's other works are equally Rabelasian? A "yes" would give me calm.

[Martin Zook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pow! is a book that I greatly enjoyed reading, but would not widely recommend. Crazy, huh?

That's the problem. To the vast majority of readers, Pow!, I fear, would seem a disjointed romp, without being able to connect the narrative to Chinese history, current Sino events, and Buddhist teachings which make for a less jolting ride. It seems to me hard to sustain interest in a postmodern, Rabelaisian picaresque for 386 pages, especially given that two improbable story lines are woven together like a braid, unless there's a more meaningful context that the reader can recognize in the text.

That said, if you groove on other works by the Nobel-winning Mo Yan, this is a, ah, feast. While Rabelais may get the edge on the amount of meat consumed (and that by no means is certain), Mo Yan gets the nod for variety: beef and pork (of course), donkey, mule, dog, horse, leopard, sheep, goat, camel, and cat.

But I digress. There are dual runaway narratives in Pow! In one, a most unreliable narrator recounts how his family rose to prominence in his village thanks to their good fortune riding the coattails of the local Wutang/big man figure, who feeds and provides for the village. Impermanence being what it is though...ooops. There I go again, getting ahead.

The second story line is a trip. For the most part, it's a narration populated with ghosts, phantoms, and spirits. Yet it also intersects with what most would consider reality 101. It includes narration of a meat festival that could have been penned by Gabriel Marquez. And, it intersects at the end with the more down-to-earth previously mentioned narrative when...I did it again.

It also helps to make one's self familiar with the Wutong cult in China, as the narrator has taken refuge in a decrepit temple. Briefly, Wutong evolved from the native shanxiao tradition of demons associated with nature. The primary Wutong (Wu translates sorcer, tong refers to the fifth, or transcendental, power) figures are a horse in the temple, and Lao Lan, the village's big man. They are sexually and economically vital, the source of the community's well being. As with all things Wutong, there is much ambiguity, especially around their morals, and the reader who will try to sort things out into good and bad will be lost...oh no, not again.

In its own way, the story between the covers of Pow! reflects recent history of China. Not only has its new prosperity allowed it to become the largest consumer of pork on spaceship earth (North Carolina not excepted), but the growing pains of its food industry has opened the door to abuses in the food processing industry.

Luckily, Mo Yan provides an explanation to all this, well - some of it, in an afterword, entitled Narration is Everything. I strongly recommend reading this first, not that it really explains everything in a straight forward fashion. But it does provide a meaningful framework that allows the reader who is firm-footed on shifting grounds to better negotiate the journey.

One other caveat: I've noticed that a number of readers on the Internets (sic) are put off by sloppiness in the text. Seagull Books should be put through a meat grinder and stewed in a pot of piss for the job they did in producing this book. Considering the author is a Nobel laureate, you'd think they could have devoted better resources to proofing the copy.

[Ligeia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"perdere la faccia" nelle campagne cinesi

Luo Xiaotong racconta il suo passato di "bambino della carne" al monaco del Tempio dedicato ai Wutong e, mentre lo rivive a suo beneficio, osserva la Grande sagra della Carne che si sta organizzando fuori del Tempio stesso...41 capitoli, la storia procede spedita, piena di succulenti dettagli e di suggestive immagini...mogli, amanti, tradimenti e "perdita della faccia" un concetto archetipico nell'immaginario cinese, uno di quelli che travalica i tempi e vale oggi come ai tempi dell'Imperatore...

racconto incentrato sulla storia di una famiglia nella Cina rurale, terra di suggestive saghe familari e di epiche battaglie, qua è centralissima la carne, oggetto mitico per gran parte della storia cinese, ma nel villaggio dei macellai non può certo mancare, eppure in una tale abbondanza Luo Xiaotong (il piccolo Tong della famiglia Luo) sviluppa una tale ossessione da spingerlo a sfidare gli adulti in gare di abbuffate e evadere la scuola per andare a dirigere il pompaggio delle carni in fabbrica...racconto/metafora delle peripezie della povera gente in Cina, adesso come ai tempi delle comuni popolari sempre ultimi e sempre sfruttati, le cose non sono cambiate poi molto, sembra dire Mo Yan (colui che non parla) che qua parla eccome, e le cose che racconta sono abbastanza crude e come sempre interessanti, un racconto che prende la mano a chi scrive come a chi legge e alla fine la sarabanda è tutta per una perdita della faccia che nemmeno ci sarebbe stata se Luo Tong (papà Luo) non fosse scappato con la bella del paese...

[Monika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Slaughterhouse Village, Pow! is a story of Luo Xiaotong and "[t]he world's most gluttonous boy"'s obsession with meat. Such is his liking for meat that their voices reach him. The villagers had left their farming business and are devoting their time to the slaughter business. Their lives revolve around the consumption and production of meat. Estranged by his father who ran away with Aunty Wild Mule, the boy is deprived of meat consumption for years. The plot glides, just like the crumbs of meat gliding down his throat.

Luo Xiaotong chronicles the story of his life to Wise Monk. He vows never to eat meat for the rest of his life. This book affected me viscerally. Humorous and gut-wrenching, vibrant and smooth, cascading and throbbing, realistic and surreal, this is the kind of story that made me look for its knotted twins underneath the surface of pages. It is a saga of lusty and beast-like men and women. It is a story that was going fine, but alas, the downfall was inevitable. Even though I loved reading it, I fear I wouldn't recommend this. My rationality has escaped. Delusion seems real.

[dely · Rating 3 out of 5]

Till three-quarters of the book I would have rated it also higher, but the last 100 pages were really confusing. I had no clue about what was going on. Also 3 stars seems still too high because of those last pages. Suddenly events go on too fast and they are also pretty weird.
The story starts with Luo Xiaotong, a 20 years young boy, that goes in a Wutong temple because he wants to become a monk (and a temple dedicated to the Wutong deities is the best place after the life he has had surrounded by such kind of people). He starts telling his life to the old monk of the temple like a kind of confession. In every chapter there are pages dedicated to the present time and pages that tell the past of Luo Xiaotong but this isn't confusing because it's pretty easy to understand the difference.
During the present time outside the temple a lot of things are going on: an important festival, that was held every year in that town, during which a lot of crazy and unbelievable things happen, people from Luo's past that have something to do in front of the temple, a play about the God of Meat is performed, etc.
Reading about Luo's past was more enthralling and it had also a lot of humour. The story starts when he was 10 years old and lived in a city that dealt with butchery. Every one was a butcher or a breeder or had a slaughterhouse. I have to add that the story takes place in the eighties, when China started to have an economical growth. People wanted only to become rich so they didn't care much about adding forbidden food additives in the meat only to sell it, and they didn't care a lot about animals. Everyone wanted to become rich and to have a happy life with all kind of modern comforts. Well, one day Luo's father goes away with his lover, and Luo's mother works hard (becoming also very stingy) to become rich and to show that she is better than her husband.
I won't add more about the plot because it would be too long seen that a lot of things happen. I think that the main purpose of Mo Yan was to show how much people can change, forgetting also moral values, only to become disgustingly rich, to gain fame, a lot of lovers, etc, as if happiness lies in such things. I like Mo Yan's idea, but sadly the book starts very well to have a downfall at the end.

[elderfoil...the whatever champion · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow! Pow! is the book that went from 5 stars to perhaps a 1 star in the final quarter of the book! Nearing page 300, I was captivated by the twin stories in this novel. I enjoyed the flow of the writing, the narrator's observations, structure of the book, spirit, themes, humor, concerns, conflicts----all centered around Meat! Classic! Beauty! I wondered where it was leading, but sensed a few different directions where the author was leaning. Fully engaged. Excited.

Then over the weekend I hit the final stretch, and the book started to drag--- mumbling diarrhea. Completely leaving the park that was crafted to that point. Prattling on. I thought it was me at first, but I went back to reread and felt the same. So much of the connections were lost, the cohesion gone. For what? I continued, and a few loose ends were sloppily and unnecessarily resolved. It seemed like Mo Yan just got tired of his own book and started bullshitting to finish it---for himself, for publishers, I don't know. The final chapter got even worse. What? Lazy. Prattle. I wondered what to make of it---maybe I missed something? But the five wonderful stars were gone. Docked to 4 and falling to three.

Finally I read the author's two page afterword, "Narration is Everything." In it Mo Yan calls down the gods of Gunter Grass...and Childhood....and that he doesn't believe in "ideology," stating that a sort of prattling was the intention of Pow!---which he calls "narration." Writing a story that could go on forever. "Luo Xiaotong tries to recapture his youth by prattling away with his tale; writing this novel was my attempt to stop the wheel of time from turning." Read the afterword yourself if you want, but....jesus....I would have been left with a better respect for the book had I not read the afterword. No, a story doesn't need to "go" anywhere. It doesn't need to resolve itself or be anything it doesn't want to be or do. And of course a story can go everywhere....or last forever. But I neither believe in nor experienced any of these grand claims through the sloppy prattle that Mo Yan pulls off in the final 100 pages of this book.

What a disillusioning and disappointing end for me to Mo Yan. Truly love-hate.

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along the same lines as Mo Yan's afterward, the actual 'story' of Pow! matters little when compared to the idea of the 'story', the concept of narration. Not only does the novel contain the dual narratives of one boy's childhood, and his future retelling his childhood, but it contains the story - or the plot - as well as the story of the story. Drawing in from aspects of Buddhist mythology, the novel aims to recreate a confession of the protagonist's life; a kind of literary reincarnation which propels the story forward from one stage of life to another. The novel's trajectory is reminiscent of the great classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. In Journey to the West the great Monkey God is tasked with escorting a Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage to India. Along the way the monk is presented with many temptations of the flesh; meanwhile, the demons that aim to tempt him are told that to eat the meat of the monk can grant immortality.

Stories are forever - meat is transient. Except in the village the novel is set, meat is everywhere. Just like Mo's gorgeously intoxicating writing and style, meat permeates through the characters mentally and physically until the reader, feasting on a never-ending stream of exotic animals and descriptions, can literally taste and feel the grease slinking from the page. The writing takes a life of its own and absorbs the reader within it. And though at times this rich description may be sickening to the unaccustomed reader, it represents successfully the continuation of what the Nobel Academy, in awarding Mo Yan the prize in 2012, described as 'hallucinatory realism'.

The book is not only about consumption but aims to consume in a method that toes the line between grotesque and vividly beautiful, between right and wrong, between dream-like and reality. The surreal nature of the novel descends slowly into an explosion of images: headless ostriches; talking meat; meat-eating competitions; horse spirits; love-struck female celebrities; the Chekhov gun of the mortar shells that give the novel its title.

At the end of the day the novel is powerfully evocative, a thrilling story about the creation of a mythology. Some readers may find the story confusing, the prose overly descriptive, and the subject matter a little disturbing but to find a stomach for this writing - and writing that exemplifies one of China's greatest writers - is the task that this novel presents, one that a hungry writer should adopt with relish. Pass on the vegetables - bring on the meat.

[Mala]

It begins "Wise Monk, where I come from people call children who boast and lie a lot ‘Powboys’, but every word in what I'm telling you is the unvarnished truth."

Sounds Rabelaisian?
Here's an excerpt from Chapter 1 :
Five years passed and, while we received no reliable news, rumours about Father and Aunty Wild Mule came every now and then, like the beef cattle that arrived at our tiny station on the local freight train, that were then slowly herded into the village by the yellow-eyed beef merchants and then finally sold to the village butchers (our village was in truth a glorified slaughterhouse). Rumours swirled round the village, like grey birds wheeling in the sky. Some had it that Father had taken Aunty Wild Mule into the great forests of the northeast, where they'd built a cabin out of birch logs, complete with a big oven in which they burnt crackling pine kindling. Snow covered the roof, hot chilli peppers were strung on the walls and sparkling icicles hung from the eaves. They hunted game and gathered ginseng by day and cooked venison at night. In my imagination, the faces of Father and Aunty Wild Mule reflected the burning fire, as if coated with a red glaze. Others claimed that Father and Wild Mule, wrapped in bulky Mongolian robes, roamed the remote stretches of Inner Mongolia. During the day, they rode their horses, sang shepherds’ songs and tended herds of cattle and sheep on the vast grassland; at night, they slipped into their yurt and made a fire with cow chips over which they hung a steel pot. The fatty stewing lamb entered their nostrils on the wings of its fragrance, and they washed the meat down with thick milky tea. In my imagination, Aunty Wild Mule's eyes sparkled, like black onyx, in the light of the cow-chip fire. Yet another rumour alleged that they'd secretly crossed the border into North Korea and opened a little restaurant in a little border town. During the day they made meat-filled dumplings and rolled noodles to feed the Koreans; at night, after the restaurant closed, they cooked a pot of dog meat and opened a bowl of strong white liquor. Each of them held a dog's leg—two legs out of the pot, and two more inside—with its bewitching aroma, waiting to be eaten. In my imagination, they both hold a fatty dog's leg in one hand and a glass of strong liquor in the other, and alternate between drinking and eating, their cheeks bulging like oily little balls…of course, I also think about what happens after the eating and drinking, how they wrap their arms round each other and do you know what—The Wise Monk's eyes flash and his mouth twitches just before he laughs out loud. He stops abruptly, the lingering echo sounding like the tinny reverberation from a struck gong. I'm momentarily dazed, unable to determine if that bizarre laugh means I should continue speaking honestly or stop. Honesty is always best, I figure, and speaking honestly in front of the Wise Monk seems appropriate. The woman in green is still sprawled in the same place. Nothing has changed—well, hardly anything. She's playing a little game with her spittle, easing bubbles out between her lips until they burst in the sunlight. I try to imagine what those little bubbles taste like—‘Go on’— They kissed each other's greasy lips, interrupted by frequent belches that saturated the air in the yurt, saturated the air of the little log cabin, saturated the air of the little Korean restaurant, with the smell of meat. Then they undressed each other. I knew what Father's body looked like—he'd often taken me down to the river in the summer to bathe—but I'd only once caught a fleeting glimpse of Aunty Wild Mule's body. But that one time was more than enough. She had a sleek body with an oily green cast that gleamed, almost fluorescent, in the light. My boyish fingers itched to reach out and touch her, and if I had, and if she didn't hit me because of it, I'd have really felt around. How would she have felt? Icy cold or fiery hot? I'd have liked to know, but I never did touch her. So I never knew. But my father did. His hands roamed over her body, her buttocks and her breasts. Father's dark hands and Aunty Wild Mule's pale buttocks and breasts. I imagined his hands as wild and savage, like those of a marauder, squeezing her buttocks and breasts dry. She'd moan, her eyes and her mouth expelling light; Father's too. Wrapped in each other's arms, they'd writhe and roll atop a bearskin coverlet, they'd tumble about on the heated kang, they'd ‘do it’ on the wooden floor. Four hands groping and roaming, four lips pressing and crushing, four legs slithering and entwining, every inch of skin rubbed nearly raw…creating heat and setting off sparks, until both bodies gave off a luminescent blue glint, like a pair of enormous, scaly, glittery, deadly serpents coiled in an embrace. Father would close his eyes, the only sound his heavy breathing, but screams would tear from the mouth of Aunty Wild Mule. Now I know why she screamed, but at the time I was innocent where relations between the sexes were concerned and didn't understand the drama playing out between Father and his woman. Her screams banged against my eardrums: ‘Oh, my dear…I'm dying…you're killing me…’ My head pounded as I waited to see what would happen next. I wasn't scared but I was terribly nervous, afraid that my father and Aunty Wild Mule, and I, the sneaky observer, were involved in something sinful and awful. I watched as Father lowered his head and laid his mouth over hers so he could swallow most of her screams, except for a few fragments that slipped out through the sides of his mouth—I sneak a look at the Wise Monk to see the effect, if any, of my slightly erotic description. I detect only a slight redness in his impassive face, but perhaps that's always been there. I think I'd be well advised to exercise restraint. Since I‘ve seen through the vanity of life and chosen an ascetic future, relating the episodes from the lives of my parents makes me feel as if I'm talking about the ancient.

[Mimmi]

Lots of meat, that’s for sure.

[Marika Salvatori · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tutte le mie perplessità qui: https://youtu.be/9ZxyZHI-JOA

[Varvara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Мифическое и реально-бытовое переплетаются здесь настолько крепко, что не поймешь, где что. Очень затягивает! Но животных жалко 😅

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the book is populated by dangers, disease and death it's impossible to not notice the silliness of it all. Pow! is a framed narrative in which twentyish year old Xiaotong Liu speaks to the Wise Monk at the local temple of his upbringing. To speak of the ending briefly, it felt invevitable yet simultaneously cut short. Xiaotong is roughly thirteen or fourteen if I remember correctly (library book, can't immediately reference) when his flashbacks end. There are large portions of peril hinted at in his narrative that are just only just that. The story he tells is not the story of how he comes to be speaking to the Wise Monk.

Strange Coincidence that I read this at roughly the same time as CivilWarLand in Bad Decline because both had settings of slaughterhouses. However the setting for this book is much more meaningful. Xiaotong is a meat connoisseur, a meat genius, a strange boy that hears and interacts with the meat he eats in a childlike way. He comes to hold a job at the local meat plant at a young and precocious age. He can outeat anyone. And yet for such a central role in the book, meat is mostly a foreign object, both in its place within Chinese culinary tradition (at least as far as this kind of meat is concerned i.e. how it's prepared) and the strangeness and sketchy legality with which it's produced.

Animals are not the only thing gruesomely slaughtered. Humans fall dead whether in flashback or in the presence of Xiaotong as he tells Wise Monk his tale. In their deaths the humans receive less dignity than do some of the animals, at least as far as our protagonist views it. His relationship with meat is propitionary. Human death is the result of chaos and anger, often the result of impulsiveness. But the process of slaughtering animals is carefully measured at every step.

The translation reportedly doesn't do the book justice. Having personally counted over a dozen typos, maybe twenty, I can heartily agree. In English there's not a great aesthetic that you feel on the cerebellum. Perhaps this is where a large part of the "silliness" comes from because we are taking the absurdity at face value and not whatever reference it suggests/mirrors/implies.

This is my first book by Mo Yan. Really only the second attempted (had to drop "Life and Death are Wearing Me Out" so that I could concentrate on Ulysses). The narrator is understandably immature and the writing comes off that way. A certain whimsy at the heart of what should really be a much sadder-feeling story. Hopefully more of his work to read in the future

[Tuco · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I Quaratuno Colpi “ è un romanzo di Mo Yan del 2003 ma arrivato nelle librerie italiane solo a maggio 2017, forse riscoperto a seguito del premio Nobel assegnato all’autore nel 2012. Ambientato in un villaggio di provincia dedito alla macellazione della carne durante gli anni Novanta, il romanzo racconta le vicende del giovane Luo Xiaotong e della sua famiglia in un periodo di forte cambiamento sociale in cui vi è il passaggio da una economia tradizionale ad una economia di mercato, consumistica. Il libro è strutturato in quarantuno capitoli in cui il giovane protagonista, giunto al tempio dei Wutong, vuole farsi accettare come allievo dal grande Maestro e, per tal motivo, inizia a raccontargli la sua storia. Ogni capitolo incomincia con un (mediamente) breve paragrafo introduttivo ambientato all’ingresso del tempio, descrivendo quello che accade tra una pausa e l’altra del racconto orale del protagonista; tali paragrafi iniziali sono l’unica pausa al continuum narrativo della storia, dettando l’alternanza dei capitoli. In tali paragrafi il tempio, da cui il protagonista narra la storia, si popola di personaggi e scene surreali, enigmatiche, allegoriche: scene grottesche e scene oniriche in cui i contorni della realtà si fanno tenui, sbiadiscono, confondendosi e intrecciandosi a sogni e visioni, quando risultano ben distinguibili, se non a personaggi già incontrati durante la narrazione orale di Luo Xiaotong, in un armonioso gioco di specchi la cui veridicità si perde ad ogni riflesso.
Per il resto il libro, con uno stile asciutto e diretto, affronta il tema del passaggio della società da una realtà locale ad un mercato di massa; la tradizione della macellazione, su cui si fondò il villaggio, lascia il posto al cinismo e alla fredda crudeltà conseguenza della grande distribuzione atta a massimizzare il profitto con ogni mezzo possibile, legale e illegale, fino a diventare brutale e irresponsabile. L’apertura ad un mercato globale implica, o inasprisce, la scalata al potere che segue spesso vie traverse e basata, in larga parte, su un sistema di corruzione; gli interessi personali vengono anteposti al bene collettivo e al buon senso. Ancora una volta Mo Yan ci racconta un pezzo di storia cinese e la sua cultura, così diversa, in cui i valori tradizionali si uniscono, o collidono, all’impostazione occidentale giunta in Cina in seguito della globalizzazione.

[Linda]

Pow! is not an easy book to which to assign stars. It's not an easy book to summarise either, as it's a hallucinatory narrative full of utterly repugnant people and events and yet is yet strangely funny and mesmerising. It's also hard not to read Pow! in light of the controversies that have raged around Mo Yan and his complicity with the Communist Party in China ever since he was awarded the Nobel Prize. I've written in more detail in a review for the Melbourne Age, which should come out within the next week or so.

After handing in my review, by chance, I came upon this quotation from Lin Yutang, a great twentieth century essayist: 'China is being ruined by our farcical view of life, by our ruthless realism and humour, by our tendency to turn everything and anything into a joke, by our inability to take anything seriously, not even when it concerns the salvation of our country.' He wrote that in 1930 but like much of what Lin wrote then, it remains apt today.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very surreal and vivid narration. Told from the point of view of a clever working class boy in (modern?) China. He has an insatiable appetite for meat, which is a constant theme from beginning to end. The beginning was slow, it didn't reel me in, but before long I was totally absorbed in the story. Not sure if I would recommend it, although for me, living in Taiwan, it is an interesting insight into our large looming neighbor on the other side of the straight's culture. And, oh yeah, Mo Yan (the author) is a Nobel Prize Literary award winner.

[sparklingboots · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely worth a read, original idea and very funny.

[Danath01 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't get past the first 100

[Filipe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Witty, surprisingly funny, great description and a great storyline.
Yet, the ending kind of ruins the whole buildup...

[Andrew Sare · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All right, meats, dear, meats, the time has come for me to feast on you so as to be worthy of your abiding love."

POW! is Juan Rulfo-like magic realism meets the BBQ Pitmasters TV series, mixed with a very dark children's fable. You don't get much more Rableisian than that. Incidentally synonyms for the noun 'rabelasian' from Merriam-Webster are: ribald, bawdy, coarse, risque, lewd, spicy, and parodic. This book is all of these things.

Yan writes of an over-the-top carnivorous child's poverty-to-meat-riches fantasy in a rural slaughterhouse town in China. The blurred conceptual lines between autobiographic-reminiscence, story telling and symbolism make this a special work. According to Guan Moye (Mo Yan is a pseudonym), the power of the narrative process is the underlying meaning of the work, and this work represents his discovery of this tool which ultimately provided greater meaning to his life.

After reading The Republic of Wine a couple of years ago I foolishly thought that that might be an outlier of creativity in Yan's work and that his other books might just be conventional rural tales. I now see that this thought was foolish. POW! certainly is a all I could ask for.

[Obione_TdG · Rating 3 out of 5]

L'autore e' stato forse un po' troppo cattivo e forzato con la Cina anni 80-90, ma sembra comune ad altri romanzi cinesi sullo stesso filone. Prende un po' di ispirazione da film e romanzi Coreani (o i coreani l'hanno presa da lui, difficile saperlo). Un po' lento, e non so se le digressioni introduttive alla Stainbeck siano utili o no. Altre recensioni dicono che il finale e' stato un po' affrettato, ed effettivamente e' vero.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mo Yan's worst novel -- a shockingly bad, boring, and pointless slog from a usually brilliant writer. I should have given up 50 pages in, but like a moron I plodded on until the end. There is not a single satisfying aspect to this work.

[Musab · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me over a year to read this, not because it was bad, but it made me so hungry every time I opened the book that I had to go and eat instead. Fun book, super chaotic in the end!

[Cindee · Rating 2 out of 5]

So there is a young man (presumably 20s? I'm just guessing here.) called Luo Xiaotong who is retelling the story of his childhood to a Wise Monk. The things that occur while he is telling the story is totally bizarre from storms raging outside and people chopping off the heads of ostriches to naked women doing odd things. Very bizarre. The story about his childhood itself is based the meat adventures of his village. He talks about his poor childhood and how much he'd yearn for a morsel of meat but his mother was too stubborn and was more focused on saving money and building their house to show his dad what he was missing out on since he ran away with another woman. Xiaotong's dad eventually returned and life got better. His dad had a special gift in weighing animals by eye and after patching up the relationship with his mortal enemy, the whole family went to work at the meat packing factory. Here, Xiaotong exercises his creativity and comes up with a way of injecting water into the meat without actually injecting water.

There is literally nothing else that happens and I just kept waiting for it to get better. It felt more like a book explaining the process of preserving meat more than anything else.

I loved the descriptions; I thought that they were incredibly beautiful probably because they were translated from Chinese so the descriptions were very exotic. There were quite a few funny parts and sad moments as well. But the good things end about there. I could not follow on at all. The tale just jumps back and forth and back and forth much too quickly for my liking. There was only one good jump, however, when Xiaotong was describing the funeral of his aunty.

Father raised the hatchet over his head.

'Father!' I shrieked as I ran to him.

'Father!' Jiaojiao shrieked as she ran to him.

The local reporter raised his camera.

The cameraman turned his lens to Father and Lao Lan.

The hatchet circled the air above Father then swung down and split open Mother's head.

She stood as still as a post for a few seconds and then slumped into Father's arms.

And THEN the chapter ended, and it went back to present day. Pow. That was good. But the other parts? Not so much.

Also, I disliked how so many Chinese words were used but were not explained. I could understand what they were saying but I'm sure other people cannot if they did not know the language.

There was practically no story line except the retelling of Xiaotong's life, which believe me, was not much of a story line even though many things did happen. The author even had an afterword where he said: "Throughout the novel, narration is the goal, narration is the theme and narration is its constrict of ideas. The goal of narration is narration. But if I were forced to make a story out of this novel, I'd settle for the story of a boy prattling on and on about a story."

It sounds beautiful in theory, but in practice, it simply means there isn't a story but and an endless stream of words.

Considering all this, I decided on a 1.5/5 but I'm tempted to bring it down to a 1. Plot is very important to me and if you don't have plot, you don't have my attention. But then again it's quite a thick book and I stayed till the end so... I don't know. I did not like it though.

[P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pow! takes place in a small town in modern China. Each chapter has a similar structure: they open (and often close) with italicized text in which the narrator, a young man named Luo Xiatong, sits in a crumbling Wutong temple and tells his life story to Wise Monk, who almost never says a word. As he tells his tale, various actions happen in and about the temple: a fox gives birth, a mysterious woman undresses, a meat festival springs up, ostriches are decapitated, mobsters battle, etc. Xiatong is quite the talker, however, and he always manages to ignore these events enough to tell his story to unbelievably patient Wise Monk. His story is the second part of each chapter, and it is the meat of the book (pun intended, as you shall see). It begins after his father has left his mother for another woman, Aunty Wild Mule, and as a consequence his mother, a tough lady, has to bring Xiatong up by herself. She not only does this; by scrimping she actually prospers. Unfortunately for her son, she is so thrifty that he never gets the chance to eat meat, and young Xiatong lives to eat meat. He literally has a digestive system and stomach that can easily process at least five pounds of steak at one sitting, as he proves later in the novel. His desire for meat overrides everything else in his brain, and he resents his mother. Later though, his father returns (with a new daughter, Jiaojiao, in hand) and after that the fortune of the family improves, mainly due to the help of the town’s corrupt yet enterprising and generous mayor Lao Lan. What follows is mostly an account of Lao Lan setting up a meat factory that illegally (and brutally) injects animals with water to increase the weight of their meat. On the side though, it seems like he might also be sleeping with Xiatong’s mother.
The sentences of the novel are lovely (especially for a translation), and Mo Yan’s ability to describe meat in over and over again is truly remarkable. Still, the story proved difficult to get into. The book’s blurbs and other reviews point to its humor, but in my own read I had a hard time pinning down any, other than the rare, easy dirty joke. Because of the tone, it felt as though I was reading a satire of a society that I was unfamiliar with, and therefore I couldn’t understand any of the jokes; hardly the author’s fault—I was not the intended audience. For example, the novel ends with several references to the number 41, and I had no idea what significance this might have in Chinese society.
Nevertheless, I was able to savor the book for its prose and for the way its odd characters gave some insight into rural Chinese life. The two narratives were woven together expertly. Best of all, I thought the ending, which dips into magical realism after a story that has (for the most part) stuck to reality with the exception of some exaggerations by the narrator, was stunning: it involves the narrator sitting on a rooftop with a mortar and lobbing shell after shell (pow!) into various places around the town as time and action are compressed into a few moments. Overall, a memorable book, though one I might not recommend to someone unfamiliar with modern China.

[Ye Wint Thu · Rating 4 out of 5]

POW! တွင် ကောင်လေးတစ်ယောက် က ဘုန်းတော်ကြီးတစ်ပါးကို ဝူတန်နတ်ကွန်းထဲမှာ သူ့ငယ်ဘဝအ���ြောင်းကို ဇာတ်ကြောင်းပြန်ပြောပြရင်း(အတိတ်) နဲ့ ဝူတန်နတ်ကွန်းထဲကနေ လက်တွေ့မြင်နေရတဲ့မြင်ကွင်း(ပစ္စုပ္ပန်) ကိုမြင်တဲ့အတိုင်းပြောပြရင်း ဇာတ်လမ်းတစ်ပုဒ်လုံးကို တည်ဆောက်ထားသည်။
ကောင်လေး ဆိုပေမယ့် တကယ်က ဇာတ်လမ်းပြောပြနေတဲ့အချိန်မှာ ကောင်လေးမဟုတ်တော့ပါ။ လွန်ခဲ့တဲ့ ၁၀ နှစ်က အကြောင်းပြောပြခဲ့တာဖြစ်ပြီး အဲသည်လွန်ခဲ့တဲ့ ၁၀ နှစ်တုန်းက သူကိုယ်တိုင် ၁၀ နှစ်ပါတ်ဝန်းကျင်ရှိမယ်လို့ ခန့်မှန်းရတာကြောင်း အခုဇာတ်ကြောင်းပြန်ပြောနေချိန်မှာ အနှစ် ၂၀ ကျော်လောက်ပါပြီ။ သို့ပေမယ့် စာဖတ်သူအနေနဲ့ ဇာတ်ကြောင်းပြောပြသူကို ကလေး လို့ပဲ စကတည်းကတောက်လျှောက်မြင်နေ(မိ) ပါလိမ့်မည်။ အဲလိုမြင်နေမိပြီဆိုရင်ကိုပဲ မိုရန်း ရဲ့ ရည်မှန်းချက်အောင်မြင်တယ်လို့ ပြောရမည်။ သူ့ဇာတ်ကောင်ဟာ လူကသာကြီးသွားပြီး အသိဉာဏ်က ကြီးမလာတဲ့ လူတစ်ယောက်ဆိုတာကို ဇာတ်လမ်းနောက်ဆုံးမှာ အတိအလင်းကိုဖော်ပြထားပါသည်။ နောက်ပြီး 'စာရေးနေချိန်တစ်လျှောက်လုံးမှာ ဇာတ်ကောင်ကောင်လေးဟာ သူကိုယ်တိုင်ပါပဲ' လို့ မိုရန်းက ဆို��ဲ့တဲ့အတွက် မိုးရန်းကိုယ်တိုင်ကလည်း အသိဉာဏ်ရပ်တန့်ကျန်ခဲ့တဲ့သူ တစ်ယောက်လိုဖြစ်သွားပါသည်။
'ကြီးထွားရမှာကိုကြောက်တဲ့သူတွေ ဒီလောကကြီးမှာရှိပါတယ်။ အိုမှာကိုကြောက်၊ သေမှာကိုကြောက်၊ အချိန်တွေကုန်သွားမှာကိုကြောက်ကြပါတယ်။ စာရေးဆရာတော်တော်များများ (အားလုံးကိုမဆိုလို) ဟာ ဘယ်တော့မှာ Grown Up ဖြစ်မလာပါဘူး၊ Grown Up ဖြစ်ဖို့ကြောက်ကြပါတယ်။ Grown Up ဖြစ်ရမှာကိုကြောက်ခြင်းနှင့် မလွဲသာမရှောင်သာ ကြီးထွားလာရခြင်းတွေကြား ပဋိပက္ခတွေကြားမှာ ဝတ္ထုအကြီးကြီးတွေပေါ်ပေါက်လာပါတယ်။ အဲသည်ဝတ္ထုကြီးတွေကမှာ ဝတ္ထုကြီးတွေ အများကြီးထပ်မံပေါက်ပွားလာပါတယ်'
မိုရန်း ရဲ့ ဒီစကားက တော်တော်အတွေးပွားစေတဲ့စကားဖြစ်သည်။
ဝတ္ထုခေါင်းစဉ်က POW! ။ နောက်မှာ Exclimation Mark ပါတဲ့အတွက် Prisoner of တော့မဟုတ်ပါ။ အသံတစ်သံဖြစ်ဖို့များတယ်။ ဇာတ်သိမ်းခန်းမှာ POW! ဆိုတဲ့ စကားလုံး ကို အသံ တစ်သံအဖြစ်အတိအလင်း သုံးထားပြန်သည်။ အသံ တစ်သံအဖြစ်မသုံးခင် pow ဆိုတာကို ' မဟုတ်တာကိုအဟုတ်ပြောသူ၊ ကြွားဝါပြောဆိုသူ' လို့ ဒေသိယသုံးရှိတယ်ဆိုတာကိုလည်းဖော်ပြခဲ့ပါသည်။
ဇာတ်လမ်းလေးပုံသုံးလောက်မှာ နည်းနည်းအီသွားပြီးဖတ်ရမှာပျင်းသွားတာကလွဲလို့ တော်တော်ကောင်းတဲ့ ဝတ္ထုတစ်ပုဒ်လို့ပြောနိုင်ပါသည်။ ဘာသာပြန်သူHoward Goldbladd ကိုလည်း (ကျွန်တာ်လက်လှမ်းမိလောက်တဲ့ အင်္ဂလိပ်စာအရေးအသားလောက်နဲ့ လှပအောင်ပြန်ပေးတဲ့အတွက်) ကျေးဇူးတင်ရပါသည်။ စာတစ်မျက်နှာပြီးဖို့ တော်တော်အားထုတ်ရတဲ့ အရေးအသားမျိုးဆို တစ်အုပ်လုံးပြီးအောင်ဖတ်ဖြစ်မယ်မထင်ပါဘ။ သူ့ဘာသာပြန်လက်ရာကြောင့်သာ မိုရန်း လက်ရာတွေကို ဆက်လက်မြည်းစမ်းဖို့ တွန်းအားတစ်ရပ်ရလာပါသည်။

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not sure what to say about this book. It leaves me with many contradictory feelings and thoughts. I don't think I would say I enjoyed it as such - Mo Yan is not a writer you read for enjoyment. At times I feel I endured it, but it was a fascinating read. I learned a lot! It required considerable googling and the ordering of some new books in order to get my head round some of the cultural background which fed the story! In that sense, I enjoyed the experience enormously - learning about the old Chinese Wutong cult while seeing its imaginary skillfully plundered ('imaginary' in the Lacanian sense, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imag...).

The book carries at least two layers of story, woven together using different typefaces - a young man's past narrative about his childhood, and the present narrative of his telling that story to an old monk. The relationship between reality, fantasy, hallucination, and truth is very blurred. The process of telling seems more important than definitions of truthfulness, which is pause for thought in itself. None of the characters is likeable. The whole story feels like it is imbued with a kind of social/moral sickness, and the demonic Wutong fabric is a perfect wrapping for it. The desperate impact of enforced poverty and loss on the mind of a child and a whole society ... the corruption of the meat industry amid all the distorted justifications a society gives to inhumane behaviour driven by traumatic political insecurity and the need to survive ... the strange obsessive dance between unbridled self interest and community collaboration, between a kind of bestial carnality and an indifferent collusion in it - all work together to offer a complex allegory of a society gone wrong. Mo Yan may not point the finger at the Chinese regime, but his criticism of his society's problems is profound. In that way it reminded me of Lu Xun's 'Madman's Diary'.

This is an ugly book. Unpleasant. It is also quite awesome. Creative. And funny! It is a satire, and its descriptions are often laugh-out-loud absurd.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel by a Chinese author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. I had heard interesting reviews of this novel so I was intrigued. I have not read anything by this author before. The book is interesting. It depicts the life in a small town in China well. The novel alternates between two narrations by the main character, Luo Xiaotong. The first narration is set in the present in which he is applying to become a Buddhist monk. He meets with the Wise Monk at a local Buddhist temple and tells his life story to the monk. So the book alternates between events that are happening in the present at the temple - including a parade a festival going on nearby - with the past events of his life story. As the book goes on, you begin to see that the narrator may not be the most reliable, and he begins to introduce elements that have an air of magic realism about it. Luo Xiaotong details his love for meat as a child, and he goes into long and elaborate descriptions about meat. At times this can be a bit over the top, but I think it could also be a cultural view of meat being very important to the Chinese particularly Chinese peasants who normally do not eat a lot of meat. It is an unique book, and I did enjoy it. There is an author's note at the very end in which the author explains some of the elements of the book, and while I had picked up on what he did while reading the book, it was a nice touch to have it elucidated for me in this brief afterword. I wish more books would do that!

[Mary Slowik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do I feel like Mo Yan got more enjoyment out of writing this than he ever expected readers to derive from it? Maybe that's just the effect his afterword had on me. (Never a good sign, I think, an author writing his own afterword) As he admits there, his narration, gleefully unreliable, takes center stage throughout the book. The whole strange, meaty, filthy story is twofold, written in italic passages of present-day present-tense taking turns with passages of memoir past-tense, and populated by interesting characters to be sure. Yet, I don't know, the fixation on consuming bizarre animal meats (camel, dog, donkey, etc.), the depiction of horrible slaughterhouse practices, and the nutty climax, all left me feeling a little lost. And in need of a shower...

I did enjoy all the references to Monkey: The Journey to the West, though, and the way Yan followed that axiom from Anton Chekhov mandating that if a gun appears during the action, it should eventually be fired. In this case that just happens to be a Japanese mortar. Though somewhat disappointed by this book, given that the author won 2012's Nobel for literature, I'm curious to read his earlier works.

[Pola · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mam bardzo mieszane uczucia w stosunku do tej książki. Faktem jest, że sięgnęłam do niej z czystej ciekawości literatury chińskiej. Nie znałam wcześniej innych dzieł tego autora. Nie wczytywałam się również zbytnio w streszczenie. Stwierdziłam, że sama sobie wyrobię opinię o autorze i o tej pracy w trakcie czytania.

Powieść jest długa. We wstępnie autor zaznacza, że wedle zasad literatury chińskiej długość powieści ma znaczenie - im dłuższa tym lepsza. I powiem szczerze, że czasem miałam wrażenie zbytniego wydłużania opisów, które w sumie nic nie wnoszą do samej treści.

Tematyka mięsa też do mnie nie przemawiała, a opisy zabijania zwierząt (choć zdaję sobie sprawę, że w kulturze chińskiej pewnie naturalne) mnie skłaniały do pobieżnego czytanie niektórych fragmentów.

Z drugiej strony nie można powiedzieć, że jest to książka bez jakiejś koncepcji. Myślę, że mimo wszystko można dzięki niej poczuć specyfikę chińskiego życia na prowincji, kultury i poglądów.

I mimo, że nie sięgnęłabym po nią drugi raz, to jednak myślę, że jeszcze kiedyś podejmę wyzwanie i zajrzę do jakiejś innej pozycji tego autora.