A long novel set on the plateau, depicting the transformation of contemporary China and the fate of the people who live there. It combines social concern with a strong sense of landscape and human endurance.

A plateau landscape frames the clash between tradition and change.

A long novel about a village in transformation, where rural modernization and local life are woven into one story. It observes how community, work, and memory evolve in a changing countryside.

A village in transition becomes a portrait of rural modernity.

A novel that draws on epic imagination to create a world of play, life, and collective memory. It turns the spirit of the Jangar tradition into a contemporary literary landscape.

An epic world of play becomes a modern literary landscape.

A long novel about time, memory, and Shanghai, set against modern Chinese history. It portrays the inner life of characters and the transformation of the city.

Secret missions and urban change shape Shanghai’s hidden history.

A psychological novel in which a murder investigation and a woman detective’s private life unfold side by side. It links criminal inquiry, family pressure, and emotional erosion into one darkly textured story.

An investigation and a private life unravel together.

A family-sweeping novel set across decades of modern China, portraying everyday lives, hardship, and hope through several families. It realistically shows how historical change shapes ordinary people’s lives.

Ordinary lives unfold under the pressure of a changing era.

A long novel about how unforgettable memories and the past continue to shape present relationships. Personal recollection and historical awareness intersect throughout a story shaped by loss and renewal.

The weight of memory unsettles the present.

A novel of movement and decision-making, tracing people who travel from the countryside toward the city and the larger currents of modern China. It depicts migration, labor, and the search for a place to belong.

A journey northward becomes a search for belonging.

A novel centered on a protagonist whose conflict, role, and relationships reveal the problems of contemporary society. Its main concerns are identity and responsibility.

A central figure is tested by duty, role, and relationship.

A novel structured around family and sibling relations, exploring moral choice and the way history affects human nature. Its fine-grained psychology and historical awareness give it its force.

Family ties expose the pressure of moral choice.

A trilogy set in Jiangnan that traces memory, desire, and the transformation of a local community through three linked novels. Its poetic, experimental prose turns regional change into a study of identity and historical memory.

Three linked novels turn the shifting landscape of Jiangnan into a study of memory and identity.

A long novel about the relationship between place and the individual, memory and history, set against the changing lives of contemporary Chinese society. It focuses on how ordinary people live through social transformation.

A portrait of everyday lives shaped by memory, history, and social change.

The concluding novel of Li Peifu’s Plains Trilogy, it portrays regional change and the fate of individuals and families. The novel centers on the clash between rural life and urbanization, memory, and the texture of everyday survival.

A novel about people who carry the weight of the plain on their shoulders.

A polyphonic Shanghai novel written largely in Shanghainese, following the city’s transformations, ordinary lives, and generational tensions. Its dialect-rich prose recreates the texture of local speech and urban memory.

Shanghai comes alive through the rhythm of dialect and memory.

A novel of moral ambiguity and desire, set in a small-city world where violence and obsession steadily tighten the plot. It examines how individual fates are shaped by guilt, history, and the fragility of human relationships.

Violence and desire tighten around a city where nobody stays innocent for long.

This ten-volume, thirty-nine-part novel is framed as a geologist’s notebook and layers people, land, memory, and idealism. Its hallmark is a narrative that spans vast stretches of time and space.

A ten-volume work that follows people and memory as if walking the land itself.

This novel portrays the reality of rural substitute teachers and follows the hardship and dignity of the people who supported education in the reform era countryside. It can be read as an expansion of the themes of Phoenix Piano.

A quiet struggle by the people who keep the school lights on.

Centered on the life of the obstetrician known as Auntie, the novel looks back on half a century of family-planning policy. It brings private memory and state policy into sharp collision.

A single woman’s life becomes the history of childbirth and birth control in China.

Through the lives and emotions of blind massage practitioners, the novel depicts the world of people living on the margins of the city. Their senses and ethics emerge with remarkable subtlety.

In darkness, the texture of life becomes even more vivid.

Built around the longing for someone to talk to, the novel follows relationships across generations. Its central theme is the rarity of truly understanding conversation within ordinary life.

A story about searching for someone who truly understands what you mean.

Set in Qingfeng Street, the novel portrays a changing village and the people who live there. Its dense, place-rooted prose reflects the shifts and strains of rural society.

It captures the pain and energy of a village under transformation.

The novel follows the history and daily life of the Evenki people living on the right bank of the Ergune River through a narrator’s memory. It tells the changing life of a community that lives in close relation with nature.

It traces the memory of people who live on the river’s far bank.

Set inside the fictional national security unit 701, the novel is divided into three parts and depicts the human drama of the intelligence world. Mystery, talent, solitude, and devotion intersect throughout.

It turns the hidden world of intelligence work into human fate.

Set in villages around the Danjiangkou Reservoir, the novel traces the changing era through the life of Nuannuan. Landscape and human relationships overlap, revealing both the realities and hopes of rural life.

Between lake and mountain, village life and hope are constantly in motion.

This four-volume historical novel traces the life of Zhang Juzheng and the Wanli reforms in the Ming dynasty. The second volume follows the Jingcha inspections and the salary-reduction controversy, the third stages the struggle around reform, and the fourth turns to the restoration of imperial power and the collapse of the reforms.

It follows the balance of power that sustains reform until it begins to fall apart.

This novel follows the life of the writer Wu Wei and traces the changing fortunes of her family across generations. Through the marriages and lives of the women around her, it portrays the upheaval and memory of modern China.

A single woman’s life becomes a lens on modern China’s memory.

Set against half a century of Chinese history from the Anti-Japanese War to the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, the novel follows Liang Daya and others through military and civilian life. It paints people caught up in their times from both the battlefield and everyday life.

War memory and human endurance are layered into one sweeping story.

Set in and around a state-owned enterprise during the reform era, the novel portrays the strain between family life and the system. It sharply brings to the surface the ideals and uncertainties of those living through enterprise reform.

The era of reform brings both hesitation and courage.

Centered on an intellectual family that moves south with the Southwest Associated University, the novel depicts wartime China. Scholarship, family, flight, and solidarity overlap, and a warm style brings the era’s wounds into view.

It gently yet deeply portrays wartime exile and the lives of intellectuals.

A novel that depicts contradictions within the system and the conflicts of local cadres, questioning personal moral choices and social responsibility. It addresses political and social issues in contemporary China.

Decision (The Choice) traces the tension between Bureaucracy and Moral choice.

Set in the decade before the 1951 ‘liberation’ of Tibet, the novel follows the Maichi family of Tibetan chieftains as narrated by the youngest, often called the 'idiot' son, portraying a feudal, romantic, and turbulent borderland society facing historical change.

Red Poppies traces the tension between Tibetan society and Feudal power structures.

Traces the life of Wang Qiyao, a Shanghainese woman, from the 1940s through the Cultural Revolution and beyond, using her story to reflect the changes of Shanghai and the fate of its citizens.

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow traces the tension between urban life in Shanghai and time and memory.

A three-volume long novel set against the history of China. Centering on tea culture, it addresses historical events such as the Cultural Revolution and explores the theme of culture's victory over violence. It combines literary narrative with scholarly reflection.

Trilogy of the Tea Masters traces the tension between tea culture and culture vs. violence.

A novel portraying war and the people who live through it. Grounded in socialist realism, it depicts the conflicts, friendships and sacrifices of civilians and soldiers during wartime, exploring human nature.

War and People traces the tension between War and Human nature.

A sweeping novel set in the White Deer Plain of Shaanxi, depicting nearly a century of family life, land, tradition and social change; detailed, narrative depiction of China's social transformations and human dramas.

White Deer Field traces the tension between Rural community and Family conflict.

A novel portraying rural society and individual fates. The work reflects the historical background and cultural changes experienced by the author, focusing on family and community memory and social transformation.

White Gate Willow traces the tension between Social change and Family.

A novel depicting social change and personal upheaval in a regional community during the reform era. Considered the author's major work; won the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 1998.

Unsettled Autumn traces the tension between social change and human relationships.

An epic novel set in rural Shaanbei following several years in the lives of young people striving to change their circumstances. Through family, friendship, love and the tensions between countryside and city, it realistically portrays Chinese society during the reform era.

Ordinary World traces the tension between rural life and social change.

A historical novel focusing on power and human fate; considered one of the author's major works.

Young Emperor traces the tension between history and power.

A novel portraying the relationships and conflicts of people living in a rapidly urbanizing China. Co-authored with Yu Xiaohui.

Rhapsody of Metropolis (co-authored with Yu Xiaohui) traces the tension between urbanization and social change.

A long novel co-authored with Sun Li that portrays urban transformation and its effects on people's lives and emotions, depicting social and personal conflicts brought by urbanization.

Rhapsody of Metropolis traces the tension between Urbanization and Social change.

The Second Sun is a novel reflecting socialist realist perspectives, portraying social and personal contradictions; it reflects the author's orthodox literary stance.

The Second Sun traces the tension between Revolution and Socialism.

Chronicles three generations of a Hui (Muslim) family of jade carvers in Beijing, addressing market entrepreneurialism, ethnic stereotypes, and social change.

Mu silin de zangli (The Jade King) traces the tension between family history and ethnicity (Hui) and assimilation.

A fictionalized account based on his experience leading the Sixth Red Army Group in a breakout of the Nationalist encirclement. Focuses on battle scenes, bonds among soldiers, and the hardships of the revolutionary period.

Bloody Heaven traces the tension between War and Revolution.

A historical novel. Detailed information such as original publication year and page count is not readily available.

Broken Golden Bowl traces the tension between history and family.

A novel set against the 1938 Yellow River flood, following rural families through disaster and survival.

The flood alters village life and remakes the fate of its people.

Zhang Jie’s novel is set in the early reform era and explores the friction between bureaucracy and modernization inside China’s industrial sector.

It portrays early reform-era industry through both institutions and human relationships.

Liu Xinwu’s novel follows the ordinary lives gathered around a wedding day near Beijing’s Bell and Drum Towers.

It captures a single Beijing day and gives three-dimensional shape to courtyard life.

A novel of about 200,000 characters depicting the realistic life of a farming family in a desolate village. It reflects the impact of rural policies on the family and is considered a representative work of the Scar literature movement.

Xu Mao and His Daughters traces the tension between rural life and family.

A novel with socialist and patriotic themes. It portrays aspects of modern Chinese history and human drama and received critical recognition.

Orient traces the tension between patriotism and socialism.

A novel focusing on military figures and postwar society, exploring personal conflicts and historical background through character-driven drama.

General's Chant traces the tension between military and postwar society.

The first volume of a long historical novel depicting the life of Li Zicheng, a leader of peasant rebellions at the end of the Ming dynasty; mixes historical fact and fiction in a multi-character narrative.

Li Zicheng (volume 1) traces the tension between history and rebellion.

Set in a small mountainous town in Hunan, the novel depicts society and daily life during the Cultural Revolution, exploring the clash between tradition and change, with a focus on rural life and women's fates.

Furong Town (Furong zhen) traces the tension between Rural life and Impact of the Cultural Revolution.

A novel portraying the lives and inner worlds of people amid social change, combining warmth with critical insight.

Spring in Winter traces the tension between social change and human relationships.