This novel is set in mid-20th century China during the transition between the rule of Chairman Mao and his immediate successors. It follows the lives of two young men, the sons of a prominent Chinese general, one legitimate, raised in all the opulence of upper class Beijing, the other illegitimate and raised in peasant squalor.

MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW

The writing is very simple and the story is in no way unique. My biggest problem is with the utter absurdity of the premise and many of the subsequent events. For example, the illegitimate son is born as his disgraced mother is in the process of committing suicide by jumping off of a sheer cliff; literally, as in evacuating the birth canal in mid-air. The baby survives, believe it or not by becoming hung in tree branches. Okay.

Even more absurd is the fact that in a nation of one billion people, the two brothers, separated by thousands of miles, actually meet and fall in love with the same orphaned young woman. Really.

This young woman, the heroine of the novel, is brutally gang raped. Immediately thereafter, and I mean immediately, she has ardent and passionate sexual intercourse with her rescuer. I’m not joking. I don’t know who Da Chen is, but pretty clearly he is a clueless male.

Perhaps equally as absurd is the rapidity and ease by which one of the characters goes from being a penniless beggar to the richest man in China in the space of about five years, owning hundreds of businesses, all of which are wildly successful from the start.

This is a book so absurd that it was impossible for me to enjoy reading it. I actually became disgusted at the extent to which the author took his readers for clueless simpletons. Some have used the term magical realism to describe the author’s writing. This is not magical realism. It only seems like it because the author’s story lines are so absurd and ridiculous. Leave this one for the Harlequin crowd. ( )

acho que não é comum a narrativa em primeira pessoa de cada um dos personagens principais. ( )

Superb family saga of rivalry and love set during the Cultural Revolution. ( )

I read this book over two years ago. Maybe three. What I wanted to impart in this review was how this book has stayed with me and while I just read a scathing review of this book I would recommend it. My memory of it is not very clear but I do know I enjoyed it and found it very moving and unexpected. ( )

local author ( )