To Live by Yu Hua

Some books aren't meant to be enjoyed. They're meant to be survived.

Review

Written by a Chinese writer who grew up inside the Cultural Revolution, who clearly never forgot what that cost ordinary people, it follows Xu Fugui: a prodigal son who becomes a man who loses everything and then keeps losing more. Over four impossible decades, Fugui watches his entire family die. One by one. The novel ends with him and an old ox, both of them still stubbornly, inexplicably alive.

I'll be honest. I didn't like this book.

Nor would I recommend it to someone who needs comfort right now.

But good literature doesn't owe you comfort: it owes you truth.

And Yu Hua is ruthlessly, devastatingly honest about what it costs to exist.

This is a book about endurance as dignity. If you can hold it.

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