The April 3rd Incident

September 1, 2018
Seven dark, challenging short stories written from 1987-91, in the wake of China's Cultural Revolution.Yu (The Seventh Day, 2015, etc.), perhaps best known for the novel To Live (1993), which was adapted for film, has long since grown into a member of China's literary elite. This lively little collection of the writer's earliest work is very post-punk and confrontational, which is likely what the young author intended at the time. In a translator's note, Barr says Yu was influenced at the time by writers like Kafka, Faulkner, and Borges, and those influences are certainly tangible in the magical realism on display, but these stories can also veer into psychic places as dark as Poe's gruesome tales. The opener, "As the North Wind Howled," finds the protagonist suddenly saddled with a dead friend he can't seem to shake. The long titular story is a foreboding, hallucinatory ramble through a city where it seems the walls are closing in. The next story, "Death Chronicle," is an equally disturbing tale about an impossible choice for a truck driver navigating a dangerous mountain road and the consequences of that choice. "In Memory of Miss Willow Yang" is a strange yet evocative story loaded with symbolism that concerns a blind man, a dead girl, and a series of bombings. "Love Story" is a bitter moment of history when two lifelong partners can no longer recognize their love, while "A History of Two People" charts the mundane intersections of two lovers' lives over the course of more than 50 years. Finally, "Summer Typhoon" is a classic example of one of Hua's many bildungsroman stories, about a young man's fateful summer in 1976.Knowing the writer Yu has become, it's interesting to look back at his work when he was at his fiercest.

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September 17, 2018
This accomplished, genre-bending collection from Yu (The Seventh Day) is full of mistaken identities, karmic retribution, and an increasingly paranoid state of existence. Collected from work written by the author in the 1980s and ’90s, the stories are formally experimental, indicative of a burgeoning period in Chinese literature and society. In the title story, Yu takes the reader on a Calvino-esque journey of time loops, characters who are not as they are purported to be, and conspiracy theories, as the protagonist grows suspicious that his friends and family around him are in on a long con that will come to a head on April 3rd. Yu’s devastating wit and morbid humor are on full display in his shorter works, such as “Death Chronicle,” in which a truck driver who was involved in a tragic hit-and-run accident over 10 years ago finds himself in a similar situation; in an attempt to do the right thing, his intentions are instead seen as malicious. In “A History of Two People,” Yu traces the lifetimes of two characters who, though separated by socioeconomic status, dream the same dream. Alternatively bizarre, surreal, humorous, and unexpectedly poignant, Yu’s collection will satisfy fans and readers new to his writing alike.

November 1, 2018

Clearly the internationally lauded Yu's translator of choice, Pomona professor Barr anglophones seven early stories Yu (Brothers) wrote between 1987 and 1991. In his edifying introduction, Barr explains that during China's "post-Mao liberalization" (from the late 1970s into early 1980s), "writers devoted their energies to broaching topics that had been off-limits." By the late 1980s, authors such as Yu began challenging not just content but also experimenting with "a new narrative mode." The narrative could be "elliptical," as in "In Memory of Miss Willow Yang," about a corneal transplant that links a dead teenager to a peripatetic "outlander"; "indeterminate," as in the title story, whose date suggests a major historic event yet to happen in an aimless, lonely 18-year-old's future; and "oblique," as in "Summer Typhoon," featuring villagers preparing for a predicted earthquake. In "As the North Wind Howled," Yu names himself as the man dragged from bed to attend a dying friend he's never met. In "Death Chronicle," a truck driver's hit-and-run accidents ultimately causes his own demise. In "A History of Two People," two children from disparate social classes share a childhood, then continue to reconnect during brief encounters marking tumultuous decades. VERDICT A provocative collection for cosmopolitan readers with a penchant for international fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 5/14/18.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2018

A celebrated Chinese author perhaps best known for To Live (made into a Cannes award-winning film), Yu here collects stories from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he and fellow Chinese authors were departing from traditional realist writing and taking a more inventive approach (think Borges and Faulkner) to depict earth-shaking changes in China at the time.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.