In this novel, the big-headed baby, who is one of the narrators of the story, tells his grandfather, Lan Jiefang, how he felt when he was reincarnated as an animal in each life.
Through the eyes of a donkey, a cow, a pig, a dog, a monkey, and a big-headed baby, Lan Qiansui, the novel looks at and savors the history of Chinese rural society for more than fifty years.
What Mo Yan writes is not only the story of rural China, but also the development process of Chinese society, and the real lives of those at the people.
Every day he pushed a wooden wheelbarrow and drove a donkey past the students with his wife, who was wrapped in a small foot.
From his experience, can also see the development of Chinese society and the change in people's hearts The story's protagonist is Ximen Nao, a benevolent and noble landowner in Gaomi County, Shandong province.
The landlord Ximen Nao is accused of being a class enemy and is eventually shot by Huang Tong, an active executor of Mao Zedong’s policies.
Upon his death, Nao finds himself in the underworld, where Lord Yama tortures him in an attempt to elicit an admission of guilt.
So after his death, he was with hatred.While Yama believes in his innocence, he is nevertheless dissatisfied with Ximen Nao’s grudge against his enemies and the mortal world.
In subsequent reincarnations, he goes through life as a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog, and a monkey, until finally being born again as a man.
Through the lens of various animals, the protagonist experiences the political movements that swept China under Communist Party rule, including the Great Chinese Famine and Cultural Revolution, all the way through to New Year's Eve in 2000.
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out garnered highly favorable reviews, though some critics suggested the narrative style was at times difficult to follow.
Jonathan Spence described it as "a wildly visionary and creative novel, constantly mocking and rearranging itself and jolting the reader with its own internal commentary.
"[3] Steven Moore of the Washington Post writes it is "a grimly entertaining overview of recent Chinese history...Mo Yan offers insights into communist ideology and predatory capitalism that we ignore at our peril.
This 'lumbering animal of a story,' as he calls it, combines the appeal of a family saga set against tumultuous events with the technical bravura of innovative fiction.
"[4] The book's translator, Howard Goldblatt, nominated it for the 2009 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, writing "it puts a human (and frequently bestial) face on the revolution, and is replete with the dark humor, metafictional insertions, and fantasies that Mo Yan’s readers have come to expect and enjoy.
"[5] Kirkus Book Reviews called the novel "epic black comedy...This long story never slackens; the author deploys parallel and recollected narratives expertly, and makes broadly comic use of himself as a meddlesome, career-oriented hack whose versions of important events are, we are assured, not to be trusted.
Mo Yan is a mordant Rabelaisian satirist, and there are echoes of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy in this novel's rollicking plenitude.
A Phenomenological Reading of Ximen Nao’s Post- Human Journey Towards Enlightenment in Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out.
2018 Fantastic Time as Para-History: Spectrality and Historical Justice in Mo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out.