Wine Country

Author: Mo Yan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-02-01
Features: The Special Investigator Ding Guoer from the Provincial People's Procuratorate was assigned to the city of Jiuguo to investigate a special case: the officials in Jiuguo had eaten countless infants. However, no one who came to Jiuguo could resist the temptation. Although Ding Guoer constantly reminded himself not to drink alcohol, finally, he drowned drunk in the toilet. The officials in Jiuguo became officials not because of their superior talent, but because of their great tolerance for alcohol and their insatiable appetite. The influence of eating has reached such a point that it can change a person's fate. Jiuguo is not a typical anti-corruption novel. In Jiuguo, Mo Yan also parodies a wide variety of Chinese fiction from the 20th century through the story of the professional graduate student Li Yidou from the Jiuguo Alcohol Brewery Academy, who continuously sends stories to the writer Mo Yan, almost parodizing everything from Diary of a Madman to wuxia novels, to magical realism and avant-garde fiction. Jiuguo does not have a fixed, singular meaning; its meaning is sliding and ever-changing. In terms of discourse, it is full of various forms of irony, parody, and paradox.