Available Formats
I Did Not Kill My Husband: A Novel
By (Author) Liu Zhenyun
Translated by Howard Goldblatt
Translated by Sylvia Li-chun Lin
Skyhorse Publishing
Arcade Publishing
14th October 2014
United States
General
Fiction
895.1352
Hardback
224
Width 152mm, Height 229mm, Spine 23mm
379g
Li Xuelian, married to Qin Yuhe, is pregnant with their second child. Happy news Not in China, with its one-child policy. It is a crime. What is she to do Her only option is divorcing before the second child is born.
Once the baby has entered into the household registry, well marry again. The baby will be born after the divorce, so well each have one child when we marry again. No law says couples with one child cant marry. Perfect! Except that after the divorce, Qin marries . . . another woman who is expecting a baby. Mad with rage, Li runs to the judge, begging him to declare the divorce a sham so she may remarry and truly divorce the fool!
Lius politically charged plot reads like an absurd and hilarious comedy, but couched in his fiction is a harsh indictment of Chinas one-child law and a head-on critique of Chinas corrupt system. I Did Not Kill My Husband is storytelling and satire of the highest order, sharp-edged and ironic.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fictionnovels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
"Government fear of chaos is omnipresent in this expertly translated political farce . . . an intimate portrait of the local politics that matter so greatly in China." The New York Times
"A masterful tale that will make you laugh even as you despair . . . Wickedly subtle satire." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Government fear of chaos is omnipresent in this expertly translated political farce . . . an intimate portrait of the local politics that matter so greatly in China." The New York Times
"A masterful tale that will make you laugh even as you despair . . . Wickedly subtle satire." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Howard Goldblattis a literary translatorof numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction from mainland China and Taiwan, including Nobel Prizewinner Mo Yan, five of whose works are published by Arcade (The Garlic Ballads;The Republic of Wine;Big Breasts and Wide Hips; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh). He has also translated works byLiu Zhenyun (I Did Not Kill My Husband; The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon; Remembering 1942, which are published by Arcade), Huang Chunming (The Taste of Apples), and Chen Ruoxi (The Execution of Mayor Yin). He taught modern Chinese literature and culture for more than a quarter of a century. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.