The Years, Months, Days

Yan LiankeChinas most feted and most banned author (Financial Times)is a master of imaginative satire, and his prize-winning works have been published around the world to the highest honors. Now, his two most acclaimed novellas are collected here in a single volumemasterfully crafted stories that explore the sacrifices made for family, the driving will to survive, and the longing to leave behind a personal legacy. Marrow is the haunting tale of a widow who goes to extremes to provide a normal life for her four disabled children. When she discovers that bonesespecially those of kincan cure their illnesses and prevent future generations from the same fate, she feeds them a medicinal soup made from the skeleton of her dead husband. But after running out of soup, she resorts to a measure that only a mother can take. In the luminous, moving title story, The Years, Months, Daysa bestselling, classic fable in China, and winner of the prestigious Lu Xun Literary Prizean elderly man stays behind in his small village after a terrible drought forces everyone to leave. Unable to make the grueling march through the mountains, he becomes the lone inhabitant, along with a blind dog. As he fends off the natural world from overtaking his hometown, every day is a victory over death. With touches of the fantastical and with deep humanity, these two magnificent novellasmasterpieces of the short formreflect the universality of mankinds will to live, live well, and live with purpose.