About the autor:

Li Peifu was born into a worker's family, in Xuchang, Henan, in October 1953, is one of the most well-known authors in China today. He started to publish works in 1978. He graduated from Henan Radio and Television University in 1984, where he majored in Chinese language and literature. After graduation, he worked at Xuchang Municipal Bureau of Culture and later became president of the Henan Writers Association and Henan Literature and Art Association. On August 16, 2015, he was awarded the Mao Dun Literature Prize for his novel The Book of Life. His most influential work is The Book of Life, which he finished in 2011, and which won him the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2015. The Book of Life is also the finale of his Plains Trilogy, after the 1999 Door of the Sheepfold and the 2003 The Light of the Cities.




About the book:

The Book of Life portrays China's half-century transformation through orphan Wu Zhipeng's escape from the poverty of his native village in Henan province. It creates a series of distinctive persons with a bold yet profound voice. Li Peifu focuses on those who carry their rural backgrounds with them wherever they go. They are tested by intense contrasts of gain and loss, fast and slow, matter and spirit, homeland and foreign land. Their fate offers us insight into the deep structures of social consciousness. These transitional struggles are a clear and urgent echo of the transformations of contemporary society.