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Book Summary and Reviews of I Did Not Kill My Husband by Liu Zhenyun

I Did Not Kill My Husband by Liu Zhenyun

I Did Not Kill My Husband

A Novel

by Liu Zhenyun

  • Published:
  • Oct 2014, 224 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Li Xuelian, married to Qin Yuhe, is pregnant with their second child. Happy news? Not in China, with its one-child policy. It is a crime. What is she to do? Her only option is divorcing before the second child is born.

"Once the baby has entered into the household registry, we'll marry again. The baby will be born after the divorce, so we'll each have one child when we marry again. No law says couples with one child can't marry." Perfect! Except that after the divorce, Qin marries...another woman who is expecting a baby. Mad with rage, Li runs to the judge, begging him to declare the divorce a sham so she may remarry and truly divorce the fool!

Liu's politically charged plot reads like an absurd and hilarious comedy, but couched in his fiction is a harsh indictment of China's one-child law and a head-on critique of China's corrupt system. I Did Not Kill My Husband is storytelling and satire of the highest order, sharp-edged and ironic.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Liu has written a masterful tale that will make you laugh even as you despair. His words are simple but they will linger in your memory long after you have finished." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about I Did Not Kill My Husband was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Liu Zhenyun

Liu Zhenyun: Liu Zhenyun joined the People's Liberation Army in 1973 China and spent five years in the Gobi desert. After graduating from Peking University, he became a journalist at the Daily Farmers. He won the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2011 and is the author of I Am Not Pan Jinlian,One Sentence Worth Ten Thousand, and Flour and Flowers from My Homeland.

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