From the MCLC Resource Center:
First published in China in 1996, Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips has come to be seen as yet another contentious work by the author. While the novel gained immediate critical acclaim after its publication, winning an award from a non-government literary magazine in Mainland China, it drew vehement criticism from diehard leftists for its blatant display of eroticism and more seriously, its deviation from the official historical narrative. It is no surprise that Mo Yan‘s bold endeavor”to rewrite official history and memory in fiction”trespassed the prohibited areas of revolutionary ideology and political correctness in the eyes of conservative critics and Party ideologues.