Frog

Frog is a richly complex new novel about China's one-child policy by Mo Yan, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012. Gugu is beautiful, charismatic, and has an impeccable political background. As a respected midwife, she combines modern medical knowledge with the touch of a healer to save the lives of village women and their babies. After a disastrous love affair with a deserter that throws Gugu off course, she eagerly immerses herself in enforcing China's draconian new family planning policy, regardless of the means, whether it be forced sterilizations or late-term abortions. Tragically, her blind devotion to the party line knows no bounds, not even in relation to her own family or herself. Once loved, Gugu becomes the living embodiment of a despised social policy that violently contradicts deeply rooted social values. Spanning the pre-communist era and the modern consumer society of the country, Mo Yan's taut narrative examines these themes.