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The Vagrants (2009)

by Yiyun Li(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1400063132 (ISBN13: 9781400063130)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Random House

review 1: This was a fascinating read. The novel is set in a village in China during the 1970's. It begins with the focus on the parents of a woman about to be executed as a counterrevolutionary, but soon we are introduced to a larger cast of characters, the villagers whose interconnected lives are changed irrevocably. The author draws us into the characters' lives skillfully and tells a compelling tale, a bit shocking at times with the violence and cruelty, you can only marvel at how the people can survive through so much hardship.
review 2: A world shaped by the Chinese Communist government--oppressive, fatalistic, crushing. In this character-driven novel the relentlessly soul killing control exerted by the government has created a society where nobody can be trusted, ... morewhere one person's gains always come as a result of another's loses, where seemingly heroic actions are destructive of self and drag others down, where no matter how vigilant you are in following the rules you can easily be destroyed by another's whims or false testimony, where complicity in injustice is routinely rationalized. No manner of flashy Olympic excess can mask the brutality of this regime. less

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