From one of world literature s most courageous voices, a novel about the human cost of China s one-child policy
Far away from the Chinese economic miracle, from the bright lights of Beijing and Shanghai, is a vast rural hinterland, where life goes on much as it has for generations, with one extraordinary difference: normal parents are permitted by the state to have only a single child. Written while Ma Jian traveled the rural backwaters of southwestern China, The Dark Road is the story of one such family, who makes the radical choice to defy the crackdown. A haunting and...