![]() But in little sketches of love and family intrigue threaded between the endless violence, Yan also builds up a picture of a peculiarly rich domestic culture shot through with magic and madness. ![]() But the faces of the Iron Society soldiers contorted whenever they described in gory detail the hideous shape of her corpse and the suffocating stench issuing from the grave.'Įven before the wars began, this was a culture founded on banditry and murder. Months later, Grandmother's corpse is pulled from the common grave to be given a proper funeral: 'According to Father, Grandma emerged from the resplendent, aromatic grave as lovely as a flower. In Yan's vision of war the action slips so quickly into myth that there is no real distinction between horror and beauty, heroism and cowardice. When this long-awaited moment finally arrives, we are intrigued to hear that she is killed bringing loaves to the troops it is her first entry into the scenes of conflict, and she seems less a heroine than an unlucky passer-by. She lived with a bandit and made a fortune out of selling sorghum wine, but we are constantly told that she was a great heroine of the resistance when she met her end. ![]() The narrator's grandmother, for instance, becomes a legend in the moment of her demise. ![]()
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