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.

韓少功，1953年1月齣生於湖南省，漢族，現居海南。1968年初中畢業後赴湖南省汨羅縣插隊務農；1974年調該縣文化館工作；1978年就讀湖南師範大學中文係；1982年後任湖南省《主人翁》雜誌編輯、副主編；1985年進修於武漢大學英文係，隨後任湖南省作傢協會專業作傢；1988年遷調海南省，曆任《海南紀實》雜誌主編（1988）、《天涯》雜誌社長（1995）、海南省作協主席（1996）、海南省文聯主席（2000）等職。當選為中國作傢協會全委委員、主席團委員（1997，2001），中國文聯全委委員（2001）。

曾在青年部門（1985）、林業部門（1986）以及大學（1995）兼職，曾社會兼任省政協委員、常委（1983、1989、1993）和省人大代錶（2003）等職。