EXPLOSIONS AND OTHER STORIES by Mo...

EXPLOSIONS AND OTHER STORIES by Mo Yan (Guan Moye), translated by Janice Wickeri and Duncan Hewitt (Renditions: $10.50). These stories of modern peasant life by the author of “Red Sorghum” offer grim portraits of people struggling to exist by subsistence agriculture in a highly regimented state. Yan shows that the entire spectrum of human passion continues to flourish within this doubly repressive system. In “Explosions,” a man forces his wife to have an abortion, rather than bear the illegal second child she passionately desires. The unnamed narrator’s relationship with his harsh father becomes a metaphor for the relationship between the people and the Socialist government. Having been struck by the old man, he observes, “He looks like a leafless tree grown up out of the threshing floor, without a speck of cool shade to offer me.” The most powerful story in the collection, “The Yellow-Haired Baby,” a romantic triangle linking a bitter, repressed party cadre, his neglected wife and a strong, gentle peasant, is told through a constantly shifting point of view.