The Seventh Day

Yang Fei was born on a train as it raced across the Chinese countryside. Lost by his mother adopted by a young switchman raised with simplicity and love he is utterly unprepared for the changes that await him and his country. As a young man he searches for a place to belong in a nation ceaselessly reinventing itself but he remains on the edges of society. At forty-one he meets an unceremonious death and lacking the money for a burial plot must roam the afterworld aimlessly. There over the course of seven days he encounters the souls of people hes lost. As he retraces the path of his life we meet an extraordinary cast of characters: his adoptive father his beautiful ex-wife his neighbors who perished in the demolition of their homes. Vivid urgent and panoramic Yang Feis passage movingly traces the contours of his vast nationits absurdities its sorrows and its soul. This searing novel affirms Yu Huas place as the standard-bearer of Chinese fiction.