The Republic of Wine
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| Author | Mo Yan |
|---|---|
| Original title | 酒国/酒國 |
| Translator | Howard Goldblatt |
| Country | China |
| Language | Chinese |
| Genre | Satire, Detective novel, Comedy, social commentary |
| Publisher | Hamish Hamilton |
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Publication date
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1992 |
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Published in English
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2000 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 356 (English) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 59544313 |
The Republic of Wine: A Novel (simplified Chinese: 酒国; traditional Chinese: 酒國) is a satirical novel by Mo Yan This novel explores the relationship between Chinese people and food and drink, and comments on government corruption and excesses. It was translated to English by Howard Goldblatt.
The novel has two distinct narrative threads, one of a standard fiction form following a detective, and the other a series of letters between "Mo Yan" and an aspiring author who is a fan of his work. The book contains ten chapters; each chapter contains several parts. The "detective" thread follows a special investigator, Ding Gou'er, sent to rural China to investigate claims of cannibalism. The "letters" thread contains letters exchanged between Li Yidou, an aspiring author, and "Mo Yan", as well as short stories that Li Yidou sends to "Mo Yan". As the novel progresses, the focus shifts from the Ding Gou'er standard narrative thread to the Li Yidou/Mo Yan thread. Some characters appear in both threads.
The Republic of Wine received near unanimous praise from Western literary critics. Phillip Gabone of The New York Times wrote, “'The Republic of Wine' is a fantastical postmodernist hodgepodge that borrows elements from kung fu novels, detective thrillers, traditional Chinese tales of the supernatural, American westerns and magic realist fiction. Some readers may find, as Mo says of one of the student's stories, that this novel suffers from "overly loose organization and relative lack of authorial restraint," but there's no denying that in his juxtapositions of the horrific and the comic, the lyric and the scatological, Mo is poking fun at China's post-Mao reformist era while letting out a wrenching cri de coeur for the lost soul of his country.”
Literary magazine Publishers Weekly praised the novel writing that Mo Yan, "fashions a complex, self-conscious narrative structure full of echoes and reflections. The novel grows progressively more febrile in tone, with pervasive, striking imagery and wildly imaginative digressions that cumulatively reveal the tremendous scope of his vision.”
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Wikipedia