The Chinese novelist Lu Yao (路遥) was born Wang Weiguo (王卫国) in 1949 in Shaanxi Province. He grew up in a very poor family, together with six siblings, and began writing novels when he was a college student at Yan’an University. In 1982, Lu Yao published his novella Life, which won the National Excellent Novella Award and was then adapted into a film of the same name, which won the Hundred Flowers Award (the Chinese equivalent of the Academy Awards) for Best Feature Film in 1984. Lu Yao became a national celebrity. In 1991, he published his magnum opus, Ordinary World, which won the Mao Dun Literature Prize. His writing was closely related to his own experiences, and it focused mostly on young people striving to change their lives. He died in 1992 at the age of forty-two, having published only two works, both considered masterpieces. Despite how well known Lu Yao is within China, he has remained untranslated until now. Life is the first translation of Lu Yao’s work to appear in English.

Chloe Estep was born in West Virginia, grew up in Florida, worked in Shanghai, and now lives in New York, where she is pursuing her PhD in modern Chinese literature at Columbia University.