“Heartbreakingly inspirational.” (AsianWeek) Ma Yan's heart-wrenching, honest diary chronicles her struggle to escape hardship through her persistent, sometimes desperate, attempts to continue her schooling. In a drought-stricken corner of rural China, an education can be the difference between a life of crushing poverty and the chance for a better future. But for Ma Yan, money is scarce, and the low wages paid for backbreaking work aren't always enough to pay school fees, or even to provide enough food for herself and her family. The publication of The Diary of Ma Yan was an international sensation, creating an outpouring of support for this courageous teenager and others like her . . . all due to one ordinary girl's extraordinary diary. "You don't review this small book; you tell people about it and say, 'Read it.'" (Washington Post)

No more money for school this year. I till the land in order to pay for my brothers' schooling. When I think of the happy times at school, I can almost imagine myself there. How I want to study!' - Ma Yan, aged 13 When the journalist Pierre Haski was passed three small brown notebooks in a remote province in Northeastern China, an extraordinary friendship began. 'A few years ago in the remote village of Zhangjiashu in Ningxia region of northern China Ma Yan was distraught because her parents could not afford to keep her in school. Today she is the 16-year-old author of Ma Yan's Diary which has appeared in seventeen languages . Thanks to its publication, her family is no longer poor, and 250 other Ningxia youngsters, mostly girls, now have scholarships to continue studying' New York Times

"The news says that guerillas captured two members of a patrol during the night. . . . [B]ut they didn't kill them. They only punished them by cutting off both of their ears. When they were found the following day, they were taken to the hospital. They are living now, but they don't hear because they don't have ears to collect the sounds of words. It is strange but true that in this town there are two men without ears." This is the story of Ignacio Bizarro Ujpan, a Maya Indian who resides on the shores of beautiful Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The story describes Ignacio's life, town, and country from 1983 to 1987, a period during which there had been declining civil instability (but increased military surveillance) and a return to civilian governance both locally and nationally. James D. Sexton provides a background to Ignacio's story and an epilogue summarizing local and national events from the end of the diary to 1991. This is the third volume in the trilogy that began with Son of Tecun Uman, which documented Ignacio's life from his birth in 1941 until 1977, and Campesino, which covered the years from 1977 to 1983. This final volume completes the story that covers three periods in Ignacio's life as well as three eras of dynamic social history in Guatemala. Nothing else in the literature is comparable in cultural richness, depth, and scope. Viewing Central America from the eyes of a peasant illuminates the complex problems of the region: the nature of the social, personal, economic, medical, and religious matters as well as the political issues related to the great masses of Latin America's poor. Ignacio's perspective, "from the bottom up," from a person occupying a position in two worlds - indigenous and Ladino - makes him uniquely qualified to describe life in rural Guatemala. The episodes in this volume include information not found in the first two volumes, such as Tzutuhil Maya customs and beliefs, the spirit world, shamanism, dreams and their interpretation, curing, destiny, celebrations, proverbs, and local and national conflict resolution. New dominant themes also emerge in Ignacio: the threat to religious beliefs and practices posed by outside interests, such as reformed Catholicism and Protestantism; the impact of a new secondary school; intercultural and intracultural conflict in the form of rivalry between the people of San Jose and San Martin; an attempt to return to democratization at both the local and national levels after three decades of military presidents and five years of mayors appointed by military governors; the problems associated with the civil defense patrols and military control of the countryside; and the attempts to hold accountable offenders against human rights. Ignacio: The Diary of a Maya Indian of Guatemala will be of particular value to students and scholars in anthropology and Latin American studies, and to all readers interested in Central America.

I know that the thing we humans call The Soul really does exist. I saw it -- in the eyes of an Old Dog. This is the true story of Martin Kosins, and the very special pet Maya who changedhis life.

An enchanting literary debut—already an international best-seller. At the height of Mao’s infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for “re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violin—as well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor. But it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed. From within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling.

The acclaimed novel of love and resistance during late 1930s China by Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty, as the Chinese battle both Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s. A legend in China, where it won major literary awards and inspired an Oscar-nominated film directed by Zhang Yimou, Red Sorghum is a book in which fable and history collide to produce fiction that is entirely new—and unforgettable.