Liang Xiaosheng's tribute to arduous lives is ultimately a tribute to truth, goodness, and beauty — for in his struggling characters, we never encounter selfish desires or tainted souls.
—Gao Yuanbao (Literary Critic, Fudan University Professor)

From early Educated Youth literature to post-reform market critiques, while Liang's peers have moved on, he alone remains — pen as banner, steadfast in his crusade for justice, charging forward without retreat.
—Chen Xiaoming (Literary Critic, Peking University Professor)

Despite vast changes since the 1990s, Liang Xiaosheng's impassioned voice remains uniquely powerful — his works continue to offer readers genuine intellectual fulfillment.
—Zhang Yiwu, Literary Critic

★Recommended by CCTV's "Reading" Program | Winner of the National Outstanding Novel Award | Included in the University of Washington's Advanced Chinese Textbook Series

★Reclaiming the dignity of a father marked by the old society — Through shifting emotional dynamics between father and child, Liang Xiaosheng reveals the warmth within a generation's suffering.

★The profound love of Chinese fathers & the spiritual world of traditional families — This autobiographical work documents Liang's personal memories with his father, confronting rarely discussed familial truths.

★A mirror for fathers and children — This book enables intergenerational perspective-taking, where every father and child may find their reflection.
★Includes six seminal works: "Father", "Northern Forests", "Master Fitter Wang", "Military Pigeon", "The Locked Diary", and "Ice Dam".

"The Father" chronicles Liang Xiaosheng's relationship with his working-class parent through unvarnished prose. As the family's sole breadwinner, the inarticulate father silently endured life's hardships. His ignorance and narrow-mindedness once scarred his children and strained familial bonds — yet in old age, he began reunderstanding these relationships. When the child becomes middle-aged, the father's social identity now depends on the son's stature. Herein lies the central dilemma: how to restore the father's independent dignity within this new dynamic?

Liang Xiaosheng

He was born in 1949 in Harbin with ancestral roots in Rongcheng, Shandong. He is a renowned contemporary Chinese writer and scholar. Currently, he serves as a senior professor at the School of Humanities of Beijing Language and Culture University, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and a researcher at the Central Research Institute of Culture and History. To date, he has authored over ten million words of literary works, including essays, novels, commentaries, and documentary literature. His representative works include "Tonight There’s a Snowstorm", "The Rings of Time", and "Educated Youth". In 2019, he won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Prize for his novel "A Lifelong Journey".

The Father
Northern Forests
Master Fitter Wang
Military Pigeon
The Locked Diary
Ice Dam

My father and I borrowed a handcart to haul coal in the pouring rain. The journey was long — the coal voucher had been issued at a depot near the railway tracks, over fifteen kilometers from our neighborhood. We split one ton of coal into three trips. By the time we set out for the third load, darkness had fallen.
Then disaster struck: a wheel jammed in the railroad switch. No matter how hard we pushed or pulled, the cart wouldn't budge, as if welded to the tracks. Covered in mud, our hands lacerated, we alternated between pushing together and pulling separately, but remained helpless. Through the downpour, I heard my father's labored breathing, like an ox straining at the plow.
Wiping rainwater from my face, I shouted, "Dad, stay here! I'll get help from the signal house!"
"Where's your strength?!" He shoved me aside abruptly, bending to shoulder the cart with his atrophied muscles.
A train's whistle sounded in the distance. As lightning flashed, I saw loose skin whipped mercilessly by the storm — an old man's strengthless back. The locomotive's beam swept toward us.
My father kept applying his pitiful effort.
I sprinted to the signal house.
The train screeched to a halt.
A railway worker ran back with me.
My father still strained against the cart, seemingly oblivious to the approaching train.
"You goddamn fool!" the worker cursed viciously.
In the locomotive's glare, my father finally straightened up. When he slowly raised his head, I saw absolute despair carved into his wrinkle-ravaged face — each furrow like an exclamation mark, more than even in that letter he'd written to my brother...
Rain streamed down his weathered face.
But I knew those weren't just raindrops. His vacant, widened eyes, twitching cheeks, and trembling lips testified to that...
This stormy night brought back another from years before—when I'd hidden between timber stacks at my army unit and wept uncontrollably...