Description
In a country where men dominate, this novel is first and foremost about women. As the title implies, the female body serves as the book's most important image. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900. Married at 17, she has nine children, only one of whom is a boy. He is the narrator of the book.
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Set in a country where men dominate, this novel is first and foremost about women. At its centre stands Mother, born in 1900. Married at seventeen into the Shangguan family, she has nine children, none by her sterile husband. The narrator of the book is her youngest, the only boy. In contrast to his independent and forceful sisters, Jintong is spoiled and ineffectual, too addicted to breastfeeding ever to stand alone. But no one is safe for long in a country going through its own terrible birth pangs, and Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman, who must constantly risk her life to save her children and grandchildren as the political tides shift dramatically from year to year.Each of the seven chapters recounts a different era, from the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the early years of Sun Yat Sen's Republic, the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural Revolution and the post-Mao years. This work, with dozens of characters bound up in the history and fate of their country, is an uncompromising vision of China.
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