"Forty-one Guns" Author: Mo Yan Publisher: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House

Introduction · · · · · ·
"Forty-one Cannons" is to set off a strong storm of literary narration and fire exciting and passionate cannonballs. The novel is set against the backdrop of the rural reform in the 1990s. In the alternation of two narrative threads that are both real and illusory, it reproduces a chaotic, real, and bizarre historical reality - in a distorted era where material desires are deified, humanity and materialization, morality and money, faith and power, and rural and urban areas collide violently. In the author's vast and unrestrained narration, forty-one cannonballs roar without scruples, indicating a complete disintegration and breakup, and also implying rebirth. When the writer dares to show the ugliest side of society, perhaps it is the beginning of the development of society and the environment towards a more perfect and complete direction.

This book won the 2nd "Chinese Literature Media Award•Annual Achievement Award" in 2004 and was shortlisted for the 7th "Mao Dun Literature Award".