Life and Death Field

Author: Xiao Hong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Field of Life and Death is a pinnacle of Xiao Hong's early creative work. This work established Xiao Hong's status as an anti-Japanese writer, making her one of the most prominent writers of the 1930s. Especially with Lu Xun writing the preface and Hu Feng composing the postscript, Field of Life and Death became a classic text of the national spirit of its time. The conception of this novel began during the Harbin period, with fragments of the first half serialized in the Literary weekly of Harbin's International Herald from April to June 1934. The entire book consists of seventeen chapters. In chapters "Wheat Field" to the tenth "Ten Years," the author uses a deeply emotional tone to depict the impoverished and helpless lives of Northeastern farmers. They suffer brutal exploitation from landlords, working six days a week, facing the sky and the earth, toiling tirelessly. Even after bending their backs and limping, they remain hungry and tormented by disease. In this life no better than that of beasts, some women give birth to deformed children. Using her keen observations as a female author, Xiao Hong vividly portrays the tragic fates of several peasant women.