Take a photo of a barcode or cover
bob625 's review for:
The Republic of Wine
by Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt
The Republic of Wine is set in the fictional Chinese province of Liquorland (which, as it happens, shares the title of a chain liquor store we have here in New Zealand), where every citizen in drinking 24/7 and the elite feast on the baby boys bred and sold to them by the lower class. Yes, the bodies of infants are boiled, baked and braised into the prime gourmet treat of the malicious aristocratic drunkards that populate this disturbing fever dream of a novel.
The main narrative of Ding Gou'er's horrifying and pitiful investigation into the cannibals of Liquorland is interspersed with fictional letters between Li Yidou, a budding short story writer and Doctor of liquor studies in Liquorland, and Mo Yan himself. Through his amateur short stories, Li Yidou describes the ins and outs of his bizarre hometown, and they soon become Mo Yan's inspiration for The Republic of Wine, which he writes during this invented correspondence. These epistolary interludes were an intriguing postmodern twist at first glance, but quickly become irritatingly repetitive, and all but drown the novel in mediocre short stories and whiny kowtowing.
A thoroughly grotesque read, not without its sublimely surreal moments, though the abundance of wretchedly wacky details and detours got more than a few winces out of me.
The main narrative of Ding Gou'er's horrifying and pitiful investigation into the cannibals of Liquorland is interspersed with fictional letters between Li Yidou, a budding short story writer and Doctor of liquor studies in Liquorland, and Mo Yan himself. Through his amateur short stories, Li Yidou describes the ins and outs of his bizarre hometown, and they soon become Mo Yan's inspiration for The Republic of Wine, which he writes during this invented correspondence. These epistolary interludes were an intriguing postmodern twist at first glance, but quickly become irritatingly repetitive, and all but drown the novel in mediocre short stories and whiny kowtowing.
A thoroughly grotesque read, not without its sublimely surreal moments, though the abundance of wretchedly wacky details and detours got more than a few winces out of me.