Publisher's Synopsis
A historical novel depicting China's shocking transformation from the Great Leap Forward to the Great Famine, Canadian Chinese author Song Liang's "Paradise" is a masterpiece. Set in a small mountain village in China's Shandong Province from 1958 to 1961, the novel features a group of ordinary farmers and their extraordinary struggle to survive in the political and social turmoil caused by the Communist Party's various radical policies. Under the leadership of Chairman Zedong Mao, whose ambition was for China to "surpass Britain and America" and for himself to become the "savior of all mankind," the Communist Party launched the Great Leap Forward campaign to promote industrialization and collectivization. All private farming was prohibited, and all the farming tools and cooking utensils made of metal were confiscated in an attempt to produce steel using the so-called "backyard furnaces." A number of crop experiments were widely conducted, with disastrous results. Worse, in fear of being condemned as lacking the "revolutionary spirit," party cadres (who doubled as local leaders) falsely reported ever-higher grain production figures to the government while communal kitchens across the nation increasingly ran out of food. In the resulting Great Famine - which the Chinese Government conveniently describes as a by-product of Three Years of Natural Disasters - it is estimated that between 20 and 43 million people perished, either having starved to death or were prosecuted as "counter-revolutionaries" at the hands of party cadres and their faithful followers, a great portion of whom consisted of local thugs. Again under the leadership of Chairman Mao, who sought to maintain face as a great leader of not only China but also the Third World, the Chinese Government refused foreign aid while continuing to contribute millions of tons of food to Cuba and various countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. Meanwhile, cases of cannibalism occurred across China... Having witnessed these historical events, Liang spent two decades composing "Paradise" as a 400,000-word epic tale. As his characters fall from the "Socialist Paradise" to a "Hell on Earth" where neighbors, friends and family members turn on each other in struggles for political power and even potential food source, we see the horror of humanity slowly being strangled and mutilated in the name of political correctness. Yet, strangely, it is in such depth of ugliness and unspeakable despair that hope keeps on thriving. By finally publishing "Paradise" after a lifetime of hard work, it remains the author's hope that exposing the true nature of tragedies can help to prevent them from happening again. While readers cannot help but smile at the courageous yet single-minded attempt of the many men and women depicted in this book to live an ordinary life, "Paradise" is an extraordinary story that will make you cry.
