One of the most-talked about works of fiction to emerge from China in recent years, this novel about an urban youth "displaced" to a small village in rural China during the Cultural Revolution is a fictionalized portrait of the author's own experience as a young man. Han Shaogong was one of millions of students relocated from cities and towns to live and work alongside peasant farmers in an effort to create a classless society. Translated into English for the first time, Han's novel is an exciting experiment in form -- structured as a dictionary of the Maqiao dialect -- through which he seeks to understand and translate the local life and customs of his strange new home. Han encounters an upside-down world among the people of Maqiao: a con man dupes his neighbors into thinking that he has found the fountain of youth by convincing them that his father is in fact his son; to be scientific" is to be lazy; time and relationships are understood using the language of food and its preparation; and to die young is considered "sweet," while the aged reckon their lives to be "cheap." As entries build one upon another, Han meditates on the ability of a waidi ren (outsider) to represent the ways of life of another community. In this light, the Communist effort to control the language and history of a people whose words and past are bound together in ineluctably local ways emerges as an often comical, sometimes tragic exercise in miscommunication.

韩少功，1953年1月出生于湖南省，汉族，现居海南。1968年初中毕业后赴湖南省汨罗县插队务农；1974年调该县文化馆工作；1978年就读湖南师范大学中文系；1982年后任湖南省《主人翁》杂志编辑、副主编；1985年进修于武汉大学英文系，随后任湖南省作家协会专业作家；1988年迁调海南省，历任《海南纪实》杂志主编（1988）、《天涯》杂志社长（1995）、海南省作协主席（1996）、海南省文联主席（2000）等职。当选为中国作家协会全委委员、主席团委员（1997，2001），中国文联全委委员（2001）。

曾在青年部门（1985）、林业部门（1986）以及大学（1995）兼职，曾社会兼任省政协委员、常委（1983、1989、1993）和省人大代表（2003）等职。