In general I thought the book to be quite good. While reading it I mainly had in mind the other socialist-realist novel I had read (relatively) recently, Nikolai Ostrovsky’s “How The Steel Was Tempered”. I kind of noticed that stylistically this novel seemed in an all round way to be improvement upon that. Of course not that Hao Ran was directly trying to make an improved copy of Ostrovsky’s work by rather took the lessons of his, and the general Soviet, application of the style and took it a step further. Especially the details of how the novel doesn’t really have defininte end and leaves the reader on a cliffhanger of sorts and how there isn’t really a main character so to speak but instead the whole village is the main character with no specific individual taking focus above all.

I also found it particularly insightful on the goings-on in China right after the foundation of the people’s republic. Which I say because in my investigation and learning of China I tend to stick more so to the writings and recounts of historians and the detailing of things as said by party officials but haven’t yet taken the time to investigate the socialist/new-democratic revolution in China on a more grass roots level. Now of course this is a work of fiction, but Hao Ran specifically wrote for the peasants, to help them in and depict their struggles in a literary format. In that sense its also useful to study fiction like this, but perhaps I should get round to reading more direct first hand accounts to broaden my understanding.

I think if you are interested in Chinese history and the Chinese socialist and new democratic revolutions and the adjacent land reform movement, then you should definitely give this book a read. It gives and very focused and particular account of that process in a fictionalized manner.

If you aren’t really interested in that history then I would say you could read it if you like as its definitely a good book, but as I mentioned above its subject matter is very specific. And so if you aren’t familiar with the topic then I think it would come off as very esoteric.