Yu Hua (Get this book) Thirteen new translations of stories by one of China's most outspoken critics of the Cultural Revolution. Hua can be hard to put into context since his work comes out in fits and starts due to the peculiarities of translation. These stories date from the mid-1990s and examine the lives of modern Chinese men and women through the prism of cynicism and violence. That subtext of violence appears in several stories, including the title story, where a boy's finger is broken, and the final story, "Friends," which ends with a no-holds-barred fistfight. The stories are spare and minimalist and quite well-composed, but the punctuation of violence and mistrust in them give them a disquieting tension. Menacing vignettes from a crowded, hardhearted corner of the globe.--Kirkus
