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See the full To Live reading order for all books in the series.
About To Live
Yu Hua's To Live (1993) is one of the most celebrated novels of twentieth-century Chinese literature — a work of devastating plainness that follows Fugui, a former landlord's son, from the 1940s through the Cultural Revolution as he loses his fortune, his dignity, and his family members one by one. Written in a voice of such simplicity that every loss is amplified into the unbearable, To Live covers forty years of Chinese history — civil war, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution — without editorializing or explaining, trusting the plain facts to carry their full weight. Yu Hua was a central figure of the Chinese avant-garde before turning to realism with this novel; it was adapted by Zhang Yimou into one of the most celebrated Chinese films of the 1990s. Along with Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (1995) and Brothers (2005), it is part of Yu Hua's late realistic period.
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