The Garlic Ballads

About

The farmers of Paradise County have been growing garlic for generations, and when the Communist government encourages them to plant more, they do. Then the warehouses fill, the prices collapse, the taxes climb, and the local officials who promised to help disappear. The farmers' frustration erupts into a riot — real, desperate, and doomed. Mo Yan based this novel on an actual 1987 uprising in Shandong Province. His account is told through the voices of three villagers — a blind minstrel, a pregnant woman, and a farmer whose love affair with a married woman has made him a target — each caught in the machinery of a system that promised them everything and delivered nothing. A novel about what happens when the people who grow the food discover they are the last ones the system intends to feed.

Awards

• ★Nobel Prize in Literature(2012 - Winner)