Boy in the Twilight

Appendix
 
My father used to be a surgeon. He was a strong, robust man with a resonant voice. He regularly stood at the operating table for ten hours at a time, but at the end of his shift his face would not show the slightest signs of fatigue, and as he walked back to our apartment his steps were loud and firm. Nearing home, he would often take a pee by the corner of the alley outside. His urine would splash noisily on the wall, like a sudden downpour of rain.
 
When my father was twenty-five years old, he married a pretty young worker from the textile mill, and in their second year of marriage she gave him a son, my older brother, and two years later she had another son, who was me.
 
When I was eight, the vigorous surgeon happened to get a day off from his usual hectic schedule. He enjoyed the luxury of sleeping all morning at home, and in the afternoon he went for a long walk with his sons and played with them on the beach for hours. On the way home he let one ride on his shoulders and carried the other in his arms. By the time they had finished dinner it was already dark, and he, his wife, and their two children sat underneath the parasol tree that stood outside their door. At that hour the moonlight shone down, casting the leaves mottled shadows over us, and a cool breeze rustled.
 
The surgeon lay on a makeshift bamboo lounge chair, his wife sat in an adjacent rattan chair, and my brother and I sat next to each other on a bench. We listened as our father explained how everyone had an appendix in their belly and how every day he had to remove, at the very least, twenty or so appendixes. His fastest time was just fifteen minutes fifteen minutes to perform the operation and cut off the appendix. We asked him what he did with it afterward.
 
Afterward . . . my father waved his hand dismissively. Afterward we throw it away.
 
Why s that?
 
An appendix isn t worth a fart, he answered.
 
Then he had a

YU HUA is the author of five novels, six story collections, and four essay collections. He has also contributed op-ed pieces to The New York Times. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of many awards, including the James Joyce Award, France's Prix Courrier International, and Italy's Premio Grinzane Cavour. He lives in Beijing.

These are expertly drawn sketches of a time and a place, the people thoroughly recognizable. The Boston Globe

[China s] transformations and what they leave in their wake have become the central theme of Yu s writing. . . . Many readers consider him China s greatest living author. The Huffington Post

Compelling. . . . Precise, elegant prose. The Economist
 
Mesmerizing tales. . . . Showcases this acclaimed writer s mastery. Elle

Folktales cast in a modern-day setting. . . . [Yu] uses the soft patter of language to wash away at least some of the hardened surface, and enduring mystery, of human behavior. Time Out New York

The stories in Yu Hua s Boy in the Twilight mine the lives of ordinary folks in small-town China. Vanity Fair

A Chinese writer noted for his popular realism sketches a portrait of his country through fictional vignettes of everyday life. O, the Oprah Magazine

Yu s clear-eyed voice perfectly suits the lives of his characters, whose humanness we recognize, even as it makes us smile or, more often, flinch. The Plain Dealer

How much happiness should one expect? How much security? How much adventure? What sorts of kitchen appliances, what kind of husband? . . . The stories in this collection . . . deal with the treachery latent in ordinary human relationships: marriages, friendships, professional contacts, and the bonds between parents and children. . . . Hua s hidden China . . . is one of regular people: not allegorical caricatures or media archetypes, but men and women struggling to sort out their lives in the early years of reform. Boston Review

Yu Hua grabs his readers attention and keeps them guessing and involved till the very end. . . . Boy in the Twilight offers an enduring testimony to the power of the short story and its ability to convey epic themes through the point of a pen. The New York Journal of Books

Yu delivers wonderful and vivid character portrayals. . . . He has exposed a darker, painful