SEPTEMBER'S FABLE

In the eyes of many critics and writers, this is Zhang Wei's perfect novel. The novel recounts a mystical tale of the movements of several generations of inhabitants of a small village on the sea coast of North China. It weaves a gorgeous tapestry of labor, love and struggle of the rural Chinese.

The novel was serialized in "Harvest," one of the most famous literary magazines on the Chinese Mainland and immediately gave rise to a strong response. Shortly afterward, two editions of it were published both inside and outside of Mainland China. In recent times there have been four other editions and the novel has continued to stay high on the art-literature best-seller lists.

This novel won first prize in China's most influential literary competition, "The Shanghai Grand Prize for Novels and Novellas." From the inception of the competition's establishment, it was the first and only time that a first prize was awarded. The publication of the novel has greatly raised the quality of Chinese literature. It has been lauded as "a masterpiece that can truly enter into dialogue with the world's first rate writing and authors." It has been called "a modern classic among China's pastoral novels." One famous critic wrote: "Reading September's Fable makes all the other contemporary Chinese novels I have read seem too commonplace to be worth reading." Many others believe that "in regards to its consummate technique, its amazing character, and the intellectual and artistic heights achieved by the work, it may be very difficult to imagine that there will be works that can surpass it."