From the daring imagination of one of China’s greatest living novelists comes a work of startling power and originality–the story of a young man “displaced” to a small village in rural China during the 1960s. Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold invention–and a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution.

Entries trace the wisdom and absurdities of Maqiao: the petty squabbles, family grudges, poverty, infidelities, fantasies, lunatics, bullies, superstitions, and especially the odd logic in their use of language–where the word for “beginning” is the same as the word for “end”; “little big brother” means older sister; to be “scientific” means to be lazy; and “streetsickness” is a disease afflicting villagers visiting urban areas. Filled with colorful characters–from a weeping ox to a man so poisonous that snakes die when they bite him– A Dictionary of Maqiao is both an important work of Chinese literature and a probing inquiry into the extraordinary power of language.

韓少功，1953年1月齣生於湖南省，漢族，現居海南。1968年初中畢業後赴湖南省汨羅縣插隊務農；1974年調該縣文化館工作；1978年就讀湖南師範大學中文係；1982年後任湖南省《主人翁》雜誌編輯、副主編；1985年進修於武漢大學英文係，隨後任湖南省作傢協會專業作傢；1988年遷調海南省，曆任《海南紀實》雜誌主編（1988）、《天涯》雜誌社長（1995）、海南省作協主席（1996）、海南省文聯主席（2000）等職。當選為中國作傢協會全委委員、主席團委員（1997，2001），中國文聯全委委員（2001）。

曾在青年部門（1985）、林業部門（1986）以及大學（1995）兼職，曾社會兼任省政協委員、常委（1983、1989、1993）和省人大代錶（2003）等職。