Retribution: The Jiling Chronicles

by Li Yongping, 李永平, Howard Goldblatt (Translator)

Retribution opens with the raucous festivities surrounding the annual procession to honor the Bodhisattva Guanyin. Changsheng, the young wife of the local coffin maker Liu Laoshi, is raped while making an offering to Guanyin in the hope of increasing her chances of bearing a son. Changsheng hangs herself following the encounter, and Liu Laoshi exacts bloody vengeance on the rapist's own wife and favorite prostitute. This act of sexual violence and its retribution provide the narrative pivot around which is woven a web of interconnecting stories, whose characters and events provide divergent perspectives on the rape and its aftermath. The result is an unforgettable exploration of the intersections of sexual desire, sadism, folk belief, and the inexorable cycles of karmic retribution.

Genres: Chinese Literature

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1986

About the author

Li Yongping was born on April 7, 1947, in Kuching, located in Sarawak on the island of Borneo in Malaysia. He received his early education in Malaysia. In 1966, he published the short story “Son of Borneo,” which won the Borneo Literature Bureau Prize. After graduating from high school, he went to Taiwan and began studying at the National Taiwan University (NTU) in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Upon graduation, he worked as a teaching assistant at NTU and an editor of Chung-Wait Literary Monthly. In 1976, Li traveled to the United States to further his studies, enrolling in department of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, and received a master's degree in 1978. That same year, he also went to Washington University in St. Louis to pursue a doctoral degree, and received his doctoral degree in 1982. He has taught at the National Sun Yat-sen University's Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Soochow University Department of English Language and Literature, and the National Dong Hwa University Graduate Institute of Creative Writing and English Literature.

(from http://web.mit.edu/ccw/li-yongping/bi...)

Reviews

[Graham Oliver · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure if a lot was lost in translation or cultural context would've added a bunch, but I didn't get much beyond shock factor from this?

[Citron Pineapple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, and interesting description of an imagined oriental village.