The Dark Road: A Novel

From one of world literature’s most courageous voices, a novel about the human cost of China’s one-child policy

Far away from the Chinese economic miracle, from the bright lights of Beijing and Shanghai, is a vast rural hinterland, where life goes on much as it has for generations, with one extraordinary difference: “normal” parents are permitted by the state to have only a single child. Written while Ma Jian traveled the rural backwaters of southwestern China, The Dark Road is the story of ...