January 2016: Our next book

Image credit: https://www.penguin.com.au

 

Frog, Mo Yan

The next meeting of the Reading Group will take place on Wednesday, 13 January 2016. At 7.30pm on this date, we will all gather in Plommer A to discuss Mo Yan’s Frog. First published in Chinese in 2009, the novel was published in its English translation earlier this year. Mo Yan, which means ‘Don’t speak’, is the pen name of Guan Moye and his curiously titled novel is set in his real-life home county of Gaomi in China. The novel is based on the life story of the author’s aunt, Gugu, and is told through a series of letters between the narrator and an unidentified Japanese writer.

Quoting Isabel Hilton in the Guardian newspaper, 18 December 2014: ‘Gugu is 70 when the story opens with the first letter. The daughter of a famous doctor, her life spans the Japanese occupation of China, the victory of the Communist party in 1949, the hunger and violent political upheavals of the first 30 years of communist rule and, finally, the lurch to a peculiarly rampant form of state-directed capitalism and the social forces it unleashes. Some villagers grow rich; others sink into destitution. Gugu trains as a midwife while still a charismatic and heroic teenager, and begins her career by dispatching the ignorant and superstitious old women who, with fatal effects, have hitherto attended village births. Gugu’s reputation spreads quickly as she delivers children through the ravages of famine and political upheaval. […]

Her golden career falters, however, when her glamorous fiance, an airforce pilot, defects to Taiwan. Narrowly escaping disgrace as a conspirator in his treason, Gugu throws herself with renewed and implacable zeal into the state’s one-child policy. The beloved midwife becomes hated state abortionist, hunting down and forcibly terminating unlicensed pregnancies. Many expectant mothers and thousands of unborn children die horribly. When China begins its economic transformation, only the poor remain caught by the rules. The rich can afford to pay the fines; the poor have to cheat. The policy stays in place, one character explains, because it allows the state to collect fines.’

The book is available in paperback and Kindle edition from Amazon* and from a number of bookshops. It promises to be a source of interesting and meaningful discussion, and we hope that you will join us to celebrate our first meeting of the New Year. Refreshments, as always, will be provided at the meeting. If you are unable to attend, please consider emailing your comments and your score in advance of the meeting.

*Please remember to use the link on the Wolfson Alumni & Development website if you choose to buy from Amazon, as College will benefit from the sale: http://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/alumni/amazon/