The Garlic Ballads: A Novel-天堂蒜薹之歌

作者：Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt

书名：The Garlic Ballads: A Novel《天堂蒜薹之歌》

中文简介：《天堂蒜薹之歌》是中国作家莫言的一部长篇小说，1988年初版。小说取材于真实的“蒜薹事件”：响应政府号召的农民批量种植蒜薹导致滞销，政府不作为，结果酿成群体事件[1]。莫言看到新闻后用35天写出了这部作品。全书共21章，刻画了高羊、高马、金菊、方四叔、方四婶等人物，除蒜薹事件外，还描写了高马、金菊二人的恋情。书中充满乡间景物描写，融入了民歌的形式，语言节奏感强。
英文简介：The farmers of Paradise County have been leading a hardscrabble life unchanged for generations. The Communist government has encouraged them to plant garlic, but selling the crop is not as simple as they believed. Warehouses fill up, taxes skyrocket, and government officials maltreat even those who have traveled for days to sell their harvest. A surplus on the garlic market ensues, and the farmers must watch in horror as their crops wither and rot in the fields. Families are destroyed by the random imprisonment of young and old for supposed crimes against the state.   

The prisoners languish in horrifying conditions in their cells, with only their strength of character and thoughts of their loved ones to save them from madness. Meanwhile, a blind minstrel incites the masses to take the law into their own hands, and a riot of apocalyptic proportions follows with savage and unforgettable consequences. The Garlic Ballads is a powerful vision of life under the heel of an inflexible and uncaring government. It is also a delicate story of love between man and woman, father and child, friend and friend—and the struggle to maintain that love despite overwhelming obstacles.