At least, I assume it's satirical, though what exactly is being satirized is probably lost on me. Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for works like this: often dreamlike, heavily biological, and pointedly satirical. Oh, and there's this sentence: 'He tripped over something, and discovered it was a string of frozen donkey vaginas.' There are apes that brew liquor in a secret mountain there's a scaly child who wanders the streets seeking revenge against those who raise boys for their meat there's an oily archvillain who can drink as much as he wants and never get drunk there's a hideous dwarf who vows-and nearly makes good on his promise-to bed every attractive girl in the city.

The Republic of Wine is somehow weirder than that description suggests. Is the braised infant that is brought to Ding on a tray real, or is it merely a clever fake, made of lotus root, as the administrators claim? These 'meat boys,' as they're called, are part of Liquorland's famous tradition of gourmandizing: it produces the best, most exotic liquor and the best, most exotic food. Investigator Ding Gou'er is dispatched to the city of Liquorland (rendered in the title as The Republic of Wine) to investigate a horrible crime: the administrators of the Luo Mine in that city have been accused of cooking and eating children. What was the source of Qu Yuan's lament? There was no liquor for him to drink. Martial-arts novels have advanced the brewer's art. A fetus in its mother's womb can detect the smell of liquor the scaly skin of an alligator makes first-rate liquor pouches. Without it there would be no Bible, there would be no Egyptian pyramids, there would be no Great Wall of China, no music, no fortresses, no scaling ladders to storm others' fortresses, no nuclear fission, no salmon in the Wusuli River, and no fish or bird migrations. Ancient fairy tales sooner or later become reality, liquor is mankind's greatest discovery.

Mo yan the republic of wine