«Even if these events never happened, they could definitely have happened, they must have happened».
The main character is a madman locked in a cage in the middle of a zoo. Who he is — no one knows. Eating multicolored chalks, he tells us stories about incomprehensible wonders from the lives of other people. A high school physics teacher from a small town met a glorious death, collapsing from exhaustion right onto the lectern in the middle of a lesson...
Figurative language, vivid heroes, overarching symbols, folk tales, and spicy proverbs will hold the readers' attention from the first to the last page. Each will traverse the plot line of the novel like a labyrinth in their own way. Dream or reality? Life or death? Fiction or truth? When does a step in life become fateful for us?
«"The Thirteenth Step" is a unique inside look at China in the 1980s, an era that we now often perceive from today's perspective as a romantic-idyllic halo of a "time of great hopes", but which clearly wasn't so for its contemporaries. This is a China of reforms that have begun but have not yet produced tangible results. A China of contrasts, of broken foundations, of grotesque and absurdity. If Kafka were Chinese and lived through the "long eighties", this could be the Chinese version of "The Castle". But we have Mo Yan. And we have "The Thirteenth Step"». — Ivan Zuенко, sinologist, historian, associate professor at the Department of Oriental Studies at MGIMO of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
«The novel "The Thirteenth Step" is a modernist trap. Mo Yan breaks chronology and plays with the reader, killing, resurrecting, and substituting characters. He moves us from the space of fiction to the earthly world, so convincingly that the line between a bad dream and the banal cruelty of reality disappears. You've heard such stories from acquaintances, read about them in tabloids — thinking that writers have imagined everything to absurdity. In truth, they only retell almost the most banal of these stories. Mo Yan breaks the rose-colored glasses and shows the world as it is — without hope for a happy ending. But if you make it to the end, you emerge into a world where you know who you are and who you are allowed to be». — Alexey Chigadaev, sinologist, translator.
«Before you is a novel-puzzle, a literary performance, and a philosophical treatise in one bottle. This is certainly a book "not for everyone", but if you love or are ready to discover Mo Yan, this virtuoso storyteller is definitely for you, just be prepared to dive into the chaos of the narrative, where no one can be trusted». — Natalia Vlasova, translator of Mo Yan's books ("Red Sorghum" and "Changes"), editor and compiler of collections of Chinese prose, multiple nominee for prestigious awards
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