"A Macondo-like tale of village and family, with magnificent imagination and real force — a fine novel."
— Su Tong, renowned novelist

★ A contemporary Chinese literary triumph rated 8.2 on Douban, China's leading book-rating platform! With abundant stream of consciousness and flashbacks, rising novelist Lin Weipan reassembles, amid the noise of a remote village, the hidden life-portrait of three generations of the Ni family that time has all but erased.
★ Published by the storied literary imprint October Culture, and praised by literary master Su Tong. This young writer, who took third place in the People's Literature Post-90s Rising Writers Competition, offers the world a soulful narrative of real force, charged with Macondo-like absurdity and tension.
★ In an age where everyone performs cleverness yet is worn down to exhaustion by rules and expectations, ordinary hearts are quietly consumed by invisible inner turmoil. What this book strikes at is the acute existential weariness of modern people facing worldly judgment and spiritual confusion.
★ The lucid eyes of a ten-year-old fool pierce family taboos and the fractures of his era. Through the purest, lightest, most compassionate whisper of imagination, he writes a memoir of history for the remote village and offers it to everyone who, lost in a bewildering life, is walking backward to find their way.

A ten-year-old fool sees what the clever refuse to. Three generations, one hidden village, a soulful chronicle for everyone walking backward to find their way.

The clamor and commotion of a southern village.
The inner tides and whispers of a fool.
Through the inner perspective of a fool called "I," the novel depicts the present-day reality of a remote village. "I" is the only grandson of the Ni family, seen as a fool because his mind works slowly. Often lost in fantasy, he is like a curious fish, repeatedly lured away by the bait the outside world tosses at him.
Told in the first person from a retrospective vantage, voiced by "I," the novel recounts what the narrator saw and thought in the days around the Spring Festival at age ten. Twelve chapters — dense with stream of consciousness, flashbacks, and the author's and other characters' filling of "I"'s blind spots — together unfurl the life-portrait of three generations of the Ni family.

Lin Weipan
An emerging young writer currently based in Beijing. He has published in literary journals including Mengya ("Sprout"), Youth Literature, Fujian Literature, and Dajia ("The Masters"). His published works include the novel Following His Memory and the short-story collection When a Cloud Bumps into a Sheet of Paper. His short story The Death of a Writer won second prize at the 11th New Concept Writing Competition; Black-and-White Era won third place at the inaugural People's Literature Post-90s Rising Writers Competition; Riding the Whale won first prize at the inaugural Zhangyue Fiction Competition; and the novel When a Cloud Bumps into a Sheet of Paper won third prize at the 1st Bookworm Literary Prize.

Chapter 1 The Crow's Nest
Chapter 2 The Hatching Stone
Chapter 3 The Stacked Stars
Chapter 4 The Electric Fish
Chapter 5 The Moon Dam
Chapter 6 The Toys
Chapter 7 Square and Circle
Chapter 8 The Grafting
Chapter 9 The Village Fair
Chapter 10 The Ominous Bird
Chapter 11 The Taboo
Chapter 12 The Boat Lantern