| Big Breasts & Wide Hips | |
| Title Orig: | 丰乳肥臀 |
| Orig Lang Code: | zh |
| Translator: | Howard Goldblatt |
| Author: | Mo Yan |
| Country: | China |
| Language: | Chinese |
| Publisher: | Arcade Publishing |
| Genre: | magical realism, historical fiction |
| Pub Date: | 1996 |
| English Pub Date: | 2005 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 552 |
| Isbn: | 978-1611453430 |
| Oclc: | 59544313 |
Big Breasts and Wide Hips is a novel by Mo Yan. It won the Dajia Honghe Literature Prize in 1997. The book tells the story of a mother and her eight daughters and one son, and explores Chinese history through the 20th century. The novel enthusiastically praises the original creator of life—the greatness, simplicity and selflessness of the mother, and the unparalleled significance of the inheritance of life. And in this flow chart of life, filled with the smoke of history and war, it is true, without any prejudice, and reproduces the history of a period of time. In 1997, Big Breasts and Wide Hips won China's Master Literature Award.
Big Breasts and Wide Hips received near universal critical acclaim from Western literary critics who praised Mo Yan's inventive storytelling and use of his unique style of magical realism to describe the surrealism the average Chinese peasant felt living under the Japanese occupation.[1] [2] Contributor for The Guardian, Paul Mason declared Mo Yan to be the Chinese equivalent of Thomas Pynchon, concluding that Mo Yan was "unlike any of the great living authors."[3]
Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post praised Mo Yan's dedication to feminism throughout the novel, but offered numerous reservations about the quality of the novel. Most of Yardley's criticism focuses on the stale prose and clumsy characterization of Jintong.[4]