Officially censored upon its Chinese publication, Dream of Ding Village is Chinese novelist Yan Lianke's most important novel to date. Set in a poor village in Henan province, it is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a blood-selling scandal in contemporary China. As the book opens, Ding Village's town directors, looking for a way to lift their village from poverty, decide to open a dozen blood-plasma collection stations. The directors hope to drain the townspeople of their blood and sell it to villages near and far. The novel focuses on one family, destroyed when one son rises to the top of the Party as he exploits the situation, while another is infected and dies. Based on a real-life blood-selling scandal in eastern China, the novel is the result of three years of undercover work by Yan, who once worked as an assistant to a well-known Beijing anthropologist in an effort to study a small village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood selling. The result is a passionate and steely critique of the rate at which China is developing--and what happens to those who get in the way.

It started at birth when a doctor left an indentation on Alan Felyk's forehead with his forceps. Yes, Damaged Right Out Of The Box . . . It was the beginning of an ordinary life that was often blended with the improbable. The result is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes wistful personal experiences book that discusses survival despite asbestos, radioactive particles, talcum powder bombs, a butt-crack abscess, quadruple coronary bypass surgery, and women . . . not necessarily in that order of importance. Jobs such as a groundskeeper, ditch digger, road crew member, waiter, surveyor, houseboy, and taxi driver provided a perfect background for his career in journalism. As a writer/editor, he left Walter Cronkite on hold, covered a vice presidential speech while stoned, and helped get Clive Cussler fired. He has found "love" on the floor of a grade-school coat closet, in the bushes of a college dormitory, and draped over a toilet seat. And somewhere among the distant stars his name could still be aboard an ill-fated spacecraft that may have sailed past Mars. Don't leave hot coffee on the dashboard for this one-Felyk's book is a rapid stop-and-go ride that spans more than six decades of laughs, misadventures, and bittersweetness.