In my New York Review essay on the new Nobel laureate Mo Yan, I objected to the writer’s way of presenting twentieth-century Chinese history. I noted that when he arrives at catastrophic episodes like the Great Leap famine, he deflects attention by resorting to what I call “daft hilarity”—shooting sheep sperm into rabbits or forcing someone to eat a turnip carved to be a “fake donkey dick”—while making no mention of starvation that cost 30 million or more lives.
Lês fierder by The New York Review Of Books… Lês fierder