Pow! (novel) explained

Pow! is a 2003 novel by the Chinese author and Nobel laureate Mo Yan. The novel's protagonist is Luo Xiaotong, a village boy with a passion for story-telling. It is set in a temple, where Luo recounts the story of his life to an old monk.^[1] He describes the difficult circumstances of his childhood in the "Slaughterhouse Village," a fictional town in which the population is obsessed with the consumption of meat and where corruption is rife.^[2] The novel has been interpreted as an allegorical commentary on the state of contemporary Chinese society, though Mo himself maintains that he is merely a storyteller, uninterested in ideology.^[3]

Notes and References

1. https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/12/mo-yan’s-new-novel "Mo Yan's New Novel: A Peter Pan tale"
2. Hector Tobar, "Mo Yan's 'Pow!' packs a punch, however veiled", Los Angeles Times, 14 December 2012.
3. https://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/01/dissent-and-demands-literature "Mo on Mo"