Word: shan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...March 1979, in a provincial Chinese town named Muddy River, a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary, Gu Shan, is executed, after 10 years of imprisonment, for publicly losing her faith in communism. At the denunciation ceremony, which the entire town is obliged to attend, it becomes clear that her vocal cords have been severed so that she cannot cry out counterrevolutionary slogans. But like a stone cast in water, the ripples of this execution spread out wide and The Vagrants - Yiyun Li's first novel after her extravagantly praised and miraculously poised prizewinning debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers...
...Chief among them are Shan's parents, Mrs. Gu, devastated by her loss, and Teacher Gu, bewildered by the nature and personality of the child he has fathered and retreating further into the arid haven of his intellect in order to cope with her demise. But there are less obvious people the death marks: Kai, a public announcer on a government radio station that spews out continuous propaganda; Kai's husband Han, a man on the make in the provincial government, who harbors dreams of greater influence; and Nini, a deformed girl, eldest of six daughters, who is nothing more...
...Staff writer Shan Wang can be reached at wang38@fas.harvard.edu...
...sanguine on the outlook of their next business venture. “It’s just a process that we’ve been through,” she said. “We’ve seen it all.” —Staff writer Shan Wang can be reached at wang38@fas.harvard.edu...
...Staff writer Shan Wang can be reached at wang38@fas.harvard.edu...