吾血吾土

Zhao Guangling, a literature student at the wartime Southwest Associated University, leaves his studies with two classmates to enter the Whampoa military academy and fight with the Chinese Expeditionary Force in Burma. Badly wounded and disfigured at the battle of Songshan and decorated by the Nationalists, he passes through several names, trains with a Sino-American unit, is drawn into the civil war and, after 1949, works in theatre in Kunming under yet another name. The novel is built from five confessions he must write for the authorities, in 1951, 1957, 1967, 1975 and 1985, each reaching back into a past that makes him forever suspect.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

War, Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

China, Myanmar (Burma), 1930s–1980s

First published

2014 by Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House

Author's age

52 when first published