Cultivating Moral Growth

Mo Yan's 1988 novel "The Garlic Ballads" saw a brief revision to the title that offered the book a slightly different context. A revised edition in 1993 reworked the title to include the word "fen nu," similar in meaning to wrathful. Published again in 2005 under the original title, a Shandong Morning News reporter remarked that the return to the title "The Garlic Ballads" was to avoid comparisons to John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." But a more accurate title could be "The Garlic of Sorrow."  Mo's work explores desperation among farmers, while Steinbeck's novel deals with desperation that breeds into anger.