The Lantern Bearer
Translated by Nicky Harman
About
Cherry Town sits deep in the Qinling Mountains, where a college-educated woman is appointed director of the new village office — a position that places her at the intersection of tradition and modernization, local power and central authority. Her efforts to improve the village collide with the entrenched interests of men who have run things their own way for generations. Jia Pingwa writes rural China with the intimacy of someone who grew up there and the critical distance of someone who left. The novel is a detailed portrait of a community in transition, where progress and destruction are often the same thing seen from different angles. A story about what happens when someone tries to bring light to a place that has learned to navigate in the dark.
