The novel To Be Alive is the representative work of the writer Yu Hua. Completed the philosophical inquiry of the meaning of life with incisive expression.

This book won the highest prize in Italian Greenzana Carver Literature Award (1998) and the Taiwan Province China Times 10 Good Book Award (1994), and was selected as one of the "Top 20 China Novels 100" in Hong Kong Asia Weekly. It is a good work that literary lovers can't miss.

Yu Hua wrote in the preface of the Chinese version of "Living": "I have heard an American folk song" Old Slave ".In the song, the old slave experienced a lifetime of suffering, and his family left him first, but he still treated the world kindly without a complaint. This song deeply touched me, and I decided to write such a novel, this "Living", which describes people's tolerance for suffering and optimism about the world. "

This novel tells how people endure great pain, the absence of despair, and that people live for themselves, not for anything other than living.

The landlord's young master was rich and addicted to gambling, and finally gambled away all his possessions. His father was angry with him and his mother was seriously ill and poor. Fu Gui went to ask for medicine, but he was arrested as a able-bodied man by the Kuomintang on the way.

When I got home after many twists and turns, I realized that my mother had already passed away, and my wife's family had worked hard to raise two children. But unfortunately, my daughter became deaf and dumb, and my son was smart and lively ... However, the real tragedy began to unfold gradually. Every time we read a page, we can't stop crying, because the rare warmth in life will be torn to pieces by death again and again. Rich wives, children and grandchildren died one after another, leaving only Fu Gui and an old cow, but the old man is still alive, as if he were freer and stronger than before.

2. How many people will experience an epiphany in The Moon and Sixpence, and fewer people will be willing to exile themselves.

The Moon and Sixpence is Mao Mu's most famous work, based on Gauguin, a French impressionist painter. After the novel came out, the plot was victorious and the words were profound, which caused a sensation in the literary world and people rushed to read it. Even many years after Mao Mu's death, this book has been continuously translated and reprinted in China.

Sixpence was the smallest monetary unit in Britain at that time. A friend joked with Mao Mu that when people look up at the moon, they often forget to put sixpence under their feet. Mao Mu found this statement very interesting, so he gave it a name: the moon represents lofty ideals, and sixpence represents reality, which can also be understood as dreams and money.

Mao Mu's hero is heartbreaking. He abandoned his happy family, his beloved wife and the wealth and status of the middle class, and devoted himself to pursuing his childhood painting dream. As if possessed by the devil, he suddenly ran away from home, leaving only a note: dinner is ready. He left the civilized world and went to an isolated indigenous island, where he lived with a beautiful indigenous person and created a masterpiece that shocked future generations. Before he went blind, he painted a great Eden in his house. But before he died, he ordered the natives to burn the painting after he died.

This book has also caused people to think about the topic of getting rid of secular bondage, escaping from secular society and looking for spiritual home.