A bold, inventive novel by one of China's greatest living authors, A Dictionary of Maqiao brings to life "a little village, impossible to find, almost dropped off the map," where a young man has been sent to live as part of Mao Zedong's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Through the imaginative form of dictionary entries, Han Shaogong tells dozens of wry stories about the eccentric residents of Maqiao. Against an Orwellian backdrop, Shaogong recounts the tragicomic realities of a community that is far from the rural paradise promised by the Chairman. Theirs is a world inhabited by lovers and lunatics, bullies and artists, all living through the calamities of daily life with a language that brings little clarity to their lives; in Maqiao, the word for "beginning" is the same as the word for "end"; "little big brother" means older sister; to be "scientific" means to be lazy. Each definition leads to a marvelous vignette, woven with wisdom and humanity.

A Dictionary of Maqiao was published to tremendous international acclaim when it was first released in 1996; it won the Shanghai Literary Prize and was named Best Novel in Taiwan by China Times. Asia Weekly ranked it in the top 100 works of twentieth-century Chinese fiction. This innovative work is a great testament to the illuminating power of language. The questions and discussion topics that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Han Shaogong's A Dictionary of Maqiao. We hope they will enrich your experience of this extraordinary novel.