Bomba is an important and splendid achievement in the creation of long novels this year. It has conquered readers with its astonishing novelty, impact and powerful imagination. Bamba pays tribute to the Mongolian epic Jianggeer. This tribute is profound. It is not only a tribute to Jianggeer, but also a tribute to our great Chinese nation, to our multi-ethnic splendid culture and great heritage. On this basis, Liu Liangcheng has re-presented and re-told the basic topics related to human life such as human and space, human and time for thousands of years, and thus opened up a brand-new structure of cognition and perception. Bamba is an important and special work, a unique and outstanding creation of the author himself. From "A Village of One's Own" to Bamba, Liu Liangcheng has come a long way and can be regarded as an outstanding writer forged by the profound land and sky of Xinjiang.
——Comment by Li Jingze, Vice Chairman of the China Writers Association

Liu Liangcheng's "Bomba" pays tribute to "Jangar", demonstrating the vitality of the diverse yet integrated Chinese culture that thrives on mutual enrichment through creative transformation and innovative development. Blending epic, fairy tale and fable, it presents a magnificent and splendid poetic realm through the symphony of singing and storytelling, with its vivid and dreamlike imagination. The remembrance of innocent childhood and the contemplation on time embody the common aspiration of humanity to return to simplicity and purity.
— The citation for the 11th Mao Dun Literature Prize

★The rights to this work have been sold in Traditional Chinese, Arabic, Nepali, Kazakh, Russian, Macedonian, and Hungarian, and it has been adapted into the play "A Dream of Bomba".
★ This novel by Liu Liangcheng, winner of the 11th Mao Dun Literature Prize, is a 2021 Huadi Literature List Novel. It has been praised for its carnivalesque style reminiscent of "Gargantua and Pantagruel," its naivety reminiscent of "Don Quixote," and its lightness reminiscent of Calvino.
★Set against the backdrop of the Mongolian epic *Jangar*, this work traces back to humanity's lost childhood, exploring a nation's historical memory and poetic wisdom. Using dreamlike and philosophical language, it tells an ancient yet novel Chinese story to the world.
★ A fairy tale for adults! A song of innocence and experience for modern people. Due to innocent faith, people turn heavy life into a light game. The lost innocence of humanity can be found in "Bomba".
★ Liu Liangcheng is hailed as "the last prose writer of the 20th century in China" and "a rural philosopher". He has won the Lu Xun Literature Prize, the 16th Hundred Flowers Literature Award for Prose, and the 11th Mao Dun Literature Prize. He is a true pastoral writer of the 21st century and a spiritual guardian in the age of materialism, embodying the serenity of Tao Yuanming and the time-space of Hayao Miyazaki.
★ The "Liu Liangcheng Works Collection" is designed and formatted by Zhu Yingchun, the winner of the "World's Most Beautiful Book" award. This series includes all of Liu Liangcheng's important works, presenting a complete picture of his creative output and spiritual world.
The "Liu Liangcheng Works Collection" includes:
Novels: "Bomba", "Drifting Soil", "Hollower Out", "Bearing Word", "Longevity"
Prose collection: "A Village of One's Own"
Interview and essay collection: "Chatting about Earthly Matters in the Sky"

Background link:
The Mao Dun Literature Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in China and the one with the highest monetary reward, can be regarded as China's Nobel Prize in Literature. It is hosted by the Chinese Writers' Association and established in accordance with the will of Mr. Mao Dun to encourage the creation of outstanding long novels and promote the prosperity of socialist literature in China. It is one of the most prestigious literary awards in China. The award is presented every four years, and the works submitted for evaluation must be long novels with a word count of over 130,000. Mo Yan has also won this award.

In Bomba, Jianggar’s land,
A heaven blooms on earth so grand.
All are forever twenty-five,
Free from age, free from to die.
— Jianggar, Mongolian hero epic

In Mongolian epic, Bomba means the vase-shaped womb for all human and all things, the home to every living thing. In this story, Bomba is the name of the grassland where Qi and his people live. It is a paradise on earth with four seasons like spring and fragrant flowers blooming all-year-round.

Liu Liangcheng's latest novel Bomba, winner of 2023 Mao Dun Literature Award, draws inspiration from the Epic of Jangar, but adopts a groundbreakingly imaginative, innovative approach. The Epic ofJangar, Mongolia's best-known epic poem) describes the bitter struggle of twelve great warriors and thousands of brave soldiers led by Jangar to defend their homeland of Bomba) where people remain at age 25, free from aging or death.

In the tale, Jangar and other heroes move restlessly about the boundless jade-green plains of Bomba, as if immersed in a dreamlike game of hide and seek. No longer living as nomadsor shepherds, they now flit about the vast land, while half of their people gradually disappear. They keep building high mountains yeai·by year) in a scheme to exhaust their enemy tribes.

In a cold night enroute to the east, Qi, the story teller, chants this epic tale to his people. He tells the story as if the great migration is merely a running game, as if the dead are merely playing hide and seek and shall come out eventually. Before dawn, however, there is an ambush, and the whole tribe weathers a morning of bloodshed. Qi hastily suspends the chanting. "Stories have legs. The chanting of the epic may no longer resound, but the story has not stopped. It leaps forward yet."

Liu Liangcheng

Born in 1962 in Shawan County, Xinjiang, he is a Chinese writer. Currently, he serves as the deputy director of the Prose Committee of the Chinese Writers' Association, a member of the 10th National Committee of the Chinese Writers' Association, the chairperson of the Xinjiang Writers' Association, the part-time vice chairperson of the Xinjiang Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and a director of the China Written Works Copyright Society. He is also a senior cultural advisor to the Xinjiang Wild Camel Protection Association. He is hailed as "the last prose writer of the 20th century in China" and "the philosopher of the countryside". He has won the Lu Xun Literature Prize, the 16th Hundred Flowers Literature Award for Prose, and the 11th Mao Dun Literature Prize.

His work A Village of One's Own caused great sensation both at home and abroad. His otherworks, including Hollowed Out, Drifting Soil and In Xinjiang, have all focused onthe village in Xinjiang where he lived for years - hence his reputation as a "bucolicphilosopher".

Chapter One Moving House Childhood
march out
nurse
move camp
wheel
be born
move house Game
King of the Huns and the Jie Fear
Chapter Two Hide-and-Seek
Hide-and-seek
Aging
Banquet
Hiding
Come out
Go home
Messenger
Chapter Three Dreaming
Wuzhong Khan
Migration
Dreaming
Reality Qi
Chapter Four: The Bomba Shadow
Return to the East
Praise Poem
Pastoral Tour
Missed
Aging
Benba
Chapter Five: Epic
The Nursing Baby HongGeer Fights Against Geling Zanbahan
Two-Year-Old Heshun Wulan Goes to War