Far away from the Chinese economic miracle, from the bright lights of Beijing and Shanghai, is a vast rural hinterland, where life goes on much as it has for generations, with one extraordinary difference: ´Normal´ parents are permitted by the state to have only a single child. Written while Ma Jian traveled the rural backwaters of southwestern China, the Dark Road is the story of one such family-Meili, a young peasant woman; her husband, Kongzi, a village schoolteacher; and their daughter, Nannan. When Meili becomes pregnant again without state permission, and when local family planning officials launch a new wave of crackdowns, the family makes the radical decision to leave the village and set out on a small, rickety houseboat clown the Yangtze River-a dark road full of tragedy and horror, but also the fierce beauty born of courageous resistance to injustice and inhumanity.