Lost in the Long March

Wang’s thoughtful and richly detailed debut novel (after the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award–winning collection Further News of Defeat) follows several characters swept up in Mao Zedong’s Communist uprising in the 1930s. The shy Ping and clownish Haiwu both fall for the same woman in their platoon, Yong, a dedicated Marxist and crack sharpshooter. Yong eventually marries Ping and becomes pregnant. Meanwhile, Haiwu gets together with the pregnant Cho, who fled from a landowner’s harem and renounces her “exploiter” to the Communists. During the retreat of the Long March in 1934, Ping and Yong must leave their baby son, Little Turnip, to be raised by strangers in the mountains. Meanwhile, the ever good-natured Haiwu takes it all in stride, even when Mao kicks his prosthetic leg in jest. Later, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, when Little Turnip is eight, he leaves to tag along with the Japanese soldiers, hoping they will join up with his parents’ army and bring him closer to them. While some knowledge of 20th-century Chinese history will be helpful, Wang does a great job showing how the bit players in this large-scale historical drama come to grips with the turbulent period and struggle to survive. Thanks to the colorful characters, Wang’s saga is consistently engaging. (Nov.)