Life, Lu Yao
Life, Lu Yao
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Life

Author: Lu Yao, Eric Abrahamsen, Chloe Estep

Narrator: Robert Wu

Unabridged: 6 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook (DRM Protected)

Published: 03/19/2019

Synopsis

An essential masterwork from Chinese literary giant Lu Yao—winner of the Mao Dun Literature Prize—available for the first time in English.Lu Yao published only two novels before his untimely death—but their extraordinary influence catapulted the author to the top tier of Chinese contemporary fiction, establishing him as one of the most widely read and respected figures in Chinese literature.In this first-ever translation of Lu Yao’s Life, we meet Gao Jialin, a stubborn, idealistic, and ambitious young man from a small country village whose life is upended when corrupt local politics cost him his beloved job as a schoolteacher, prompting him to reject rural life and try to make it in the big city. Against the vivid, gritty backdrop of 1980s China, Lu Yao traces the proud and passionate Gao Jialin’s difficult path to professional, romantic, and personal fulfillment—or at least hard-won acceptance.With the emotional acuity and narrative mastery that secured his reputation as one of China’s great novelists, Lu Yao paints a vivid, emotional, and unsparing portrait of contemporary Chinese life, seen through the eyes of a working-class man who refuses to be broken.

About Lu Yao

The Chinese novelist Lu Yao (路遥) was born Wang Weiguo (王卫国) in 1949 in Shaanxi Province. He grew up in a very poor family, together with six siblings, and began writing novels when he was a college student at Yan’an University. In 1982, Lu Yao published his novella Life, which won the National Excellent Novella Award and was then adapted into a film of the same name, which won the Hundred Flowers Award (the Chinese equivalent of the Academy Awards) for Best Feature Film in 1984. Lu Yao became a national celebrity. In 1991, he published his magnum opus, Ordinary World, which won the Mao Dun Literature Prize. His writing was closely related to his own experiences, and it focused mostly on young people striving to change their lives. He died in 1992 at the age of forty-two, having published only two works, both considered masterpieces. Despite how well known Lu Yao is within China, he has remained untranslated until now. Life is the first translation of Lu Yao’s work to appear in English.

Reviews

Goodreads review by 8stitches 9lives on March 18, 2019

Lu Yao is one of the most celebrated, prominent Chinese writers of the twentieth century, and this, one of only two novels he wrote before his passing age forty-two, is the first English translation despite being originally published decades ago. My seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge on the......more

Goodreads review by Lorellie on June 27, 2022

I'm wrecked. "She had thought about dying. But when she looked at the mountain valley she had lived and labored in for more than twenty years, when she looked at the earth and plants that she had kept green with her own sweat, those thoughts dissipated instantly. She was reluctant to leave this world......more

Goodreads review by PeppyKC on April 29, 2019

This was a deep philosophical book.... on life and how we go about living it. I need to read it again, I don’t have a suitable review in my mind yet. This book deserves thought and insight. I love how it makes you think and reconsider things. I WILL say that the main character was annoying.........more

Goodreads review by Nancy on July 22, 2021

I once took a Chinese film class with selections that spanned the decades of the 20th century. Some of the films were from the same time period in which this novel is set. While reading, I kept thinking this would make a great movie for that class. Turns out, they did make a film in 1984, and it won......more

Goodreads review by Cherisa on December 29, 2021

I have mixed feelings about this book though I read it nearly straight through as it kept my attention throughout. In many ways it reminded me of old European novels, the earnest protagonist with a good heart trying to improve his lot in life, but at the same time it's set in 1980s Communist China w......more

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