Labyrinth of the Past [Paperback]

Labyrinth of the Pastis a collection of short stories that explore the lives of young women raised by single mothers in China, a country that is unforgiving to unmarried women and their children.

A dark, yet engrossing look at the lives of these girls, each story examines their personal struggles with family and the greater world around them. Coping with the stigma of being the daughter of a single mother, most of these women can't seem to form anything but dysfunctional relationships, from mothers to friends to lovers.

While often frank and terribly bleak, these stories provide a vivid and real view of the women who struggle against a history they can't change, in a culture that has difficulty accepting them. I came to find Zhang Yiwei's depictions of childhood to be one of its biggest strengths. Her ability to evoke its timelessness, the sense of children's whole worlds confined to just a few streets and fields, and our fuzzy, malleable memories of that phase of our lives is really quite remarkable (frankly, it immediately reminded me of the magic realism of100 Years of Solitude) —The Grand NarrativeblogZhang Yiweiis a writer with the Shanghai Writers Association. She won the first prize for Fiction at the 38th Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards and the 33rd Taiwan China Times Literary Award. Her publications include the novelsThe Night You Don't Know(2012),Next Stop Xidan(2010) andAwakening(2009), and the collection of short storiesWait Up, Time.