Yu Hua

Talk and Book SigningAdmission FreeA million-copy bestseller upon its publication in China, Yu Hua’s Brothers encapsulates the story of modern China, offering a satirical and compassionate portrait of life after Mao. The story of two stepbrothers, Baldy Li (talkative, outgoing and sex-obsessed) and ... (more)Song Gang (quiet and bookish), Brothers depicts the acceleration of slow-paced village life into high-tech modernity as everyone scrambles to get rich and famous in the decades following the Cultural Revolution. The Boston Globe calls Brothers a book full of “mind-bending moments…Both ribald and elegiac…a satire, but also a rebuke of how China, in its breathless pursuit of success, has compromised its soul.” Yu Hua is the author of thirteen books including To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, named two of the last decade’s ten most influential books in China. In 2002 he became the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious James Joyce Foundation Award.

Making a most welcome Seattle—and Elliott Bay—return is one of the leading novelists at work in China, and the world, the award-winning Yu Hua. He is here as part of a U.S. tour for the publication of his major new work, Brothers (Pantheon, translated by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas). Shortlisted ... (more)for the Man Asian Literary Prize, recipient of France's Prix Courrier International, and a bestseller in his home country (Yu Hua lives in Beijing), this sweeping, dazzling novel tells the story of two step-brothers and the different courses they navigate in living through forty years of almost unfathomable change. It is expected that this reading will be bilingual, with the author reading in Chinese, and translation provided—a special treat this is for all attending.