Frog

Mo Yan · b. 1955 · China

Originally Wa (Chinese) · translated by Howard Goldblatt

Why it matters

A rural midwife who once delivered thousands of babies is later forced to enforce the one-child policy's abortions and sterilizations, her guilt narrated through letters to a Japanese writer. Mo Yan's most directly political late novel, confronting a policy few dared fictionalize so bluntly.

At a glance

A layered epistolary frame, plus an embedded play in its final section, complicate an otherwise plain narrative voice.