{"product_id":"cherries-on-a-pomegranate-tree-by-li-er","title":"'Cherries on a Pomegranate Tree' by Li Er","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"76\" data-end=\"496\"\u003eSet in rural China under the one-child policy, \u003cem data-start=\"123\" data-end=\"155\"\u003eCherries on a Pomegranate Tree\u003c\/em\u003e follows Kong Fanhua, the only female village chief in Xiushui County, as she tries to manage a local crisis.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"76\" data-end=\"496\"\u003eThe crisis is one that is both intimate and brutally political: a woman has fled after becoming pregnant illegally, leaving behind children, rumours, officials, family pressures, and the usual village machinery of gossip, suspicion and self-interest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"498\" data-end=\"1001\"\u003eLi Er writes village life as a dense social ecosystem, where policy is never abstract because it arrives through bodies, marriages, pregnancies, paperwork, favours, debts, loudspeakers, committees, bribes, jokes, and the anxious business of everyone knowing everyone else’s business. The result is sharp, darkly funny, morally complicated fiction about power at ground level.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1003\" data-end=\"1303\"\u003eA strong pick for readers interested in contemporary Chinese fiction, social realism, political absurdity, rural power structures, and novels that understand how systems actually work: through rumour, obligation, petty advantage, fear, improvisation, and the occasional very inconvenient human being.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1329\" data-end=\"1453\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2023 Sinoist Books hardback, translated by Dave Haysom. Very good condition, with light shelf wear only. Clean, bright copy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44987823521875,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-31T175027.017.png?v=1780213986","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/cherries-on-a-pomegranate-tree-by-li-er","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}