The novel's protagonist is Luo Xiaotong, a village boy with a passion for story-telling.

It is set in a temple, where Luo recounts the story of his life to an old monk.

[1] He describes the difficult circumstances of his childhood in the "Slaughterhouse Village," a fictional town in which the population is obsessed with the consumption of meat and where corruption is rife.

[2] The novel has been interpreted as an allegorical commentary on the state of contemporary Chinese society, though Mo himself maintains that he is merely a storyteller, uninterested in ideology.

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