A Single Swallow Kindle Edition

I loved this novel! Told from the perspective of the ghosts of 3 men who all loved the same woman. Truly one of the best stories I've ever read...

The very first sentence of the story is the beginning thread that stitches together happiness/grief, trust/broken promises, love/heartache, perseverance/apathy, and tenacity/stubbornness with all whom Swallow meets in her lifetime as told by three specific individuals recalling their memories of her. It was an incredible and thought-provoking read.

I loved the prose and beautiful metaphors. The story was unforgettable and tragic. Yet, it was also an incredible story of a woman's strength and the people around her that shaped her destiny. I really loved the book and haven't read anything like it. Fantastic story!

I have been on a reading jag lately, moving from pre-war Vienna to Sino-Japanese Korea and now to eastern China late in WW2. The books have all impressed me in many ways, but this one will stay with me for a very long time. Please, if you appreciate superb writing, give this one a shot.

The format was at first off putting but grows on you. Wonderful tale of war and China. A truly great anti war book.

I had no expectations going into this and was met with such a beautiful book.The way it was written is something I’ve never seen before and it’s sweet, and sad and sorrowful and loving. Highly recommend

A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling, translated by Shelly Bryant is a story about the devastation of war, forgiveness, redemption, and the enduring power of love. On the historic day, August 15, 1945, the Jewel Voice Broadcast aired the speech of Emperor Hirohito which announced Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces, bringing an end to World War II. Three men made a pact. After their deaths, each year on the anniversary of the broadcast, their souls would return to Yuehu, the Chinese village where they fought and survived in a war that shook the world and changed their lives forever. Now seventy years later, the pledge is being fulfilled by Pastor Billy, an American missionary, Ian Ferguson, a brash gunner’s mate, and Liu Zhaohu, a local soldier. All that is missing is Yao Ah Yan. She was the girl each man loved in his own profound way. As they retell their personal stories of the war and the woman who touched his life, the story of Ah Yan is revealed. What was her story and how did she profoundly influence the lives of these three men?A Single Swallow is a beautiful story told from the memories of three dead men who talk about their wartime experiences. Experiences centered around one woman. From the opening chapter, I was pulled into the interesting premise of these men visiting after death. I eagerly turned each page as I read how each man knew this woman and how they changed each other’s lives, for good and bad. It was a book I could not put down. I happened to finish it in a few hours. But the story was so engaging that I barely noticed the time. Ms. Zhang weaves a complex tapestry of cause and consequence that can forever shape one’s life and how our inner strength determines how we respond to those situations and challenges. I also enjoyed the ending and felt it was very fitting. It was a captivating read which figures a part of the World War II story that is overshadowed by stories of the European front. A few reviews I read disliked that Ah Yan’s voice is never heard; however, I enjoyed this aspect as it gave her a mysterious air. I highly recommend A Single Swallow.A Single Swallow is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook

As an American who has lived in China for 11 years I have come to appreciate that one of the primary differences in Chinese and Western culture flows from a fundamental difference in worldview. Westerners have a very deductive worldview. We worship science and its underlying premise of cause and effect. The Chinese, by contrast, are much more inductive in the way they interpret reality. Effect and outcome, not cause, occupy center stage in their worldview.Chinese novels, and this is a great one to be sure, tend to reflect that distinction to varying degrees. That is why dogs and ghosts can be important narrators, as they are in this book, and superstition and folklore always weave themselves into the narrative, even if not endorsed or accepted by the author. (How dogs and cats can “talk” is irrelevant. They just do.)This is a very human novel with a relatively small cast of protagonists. While more members of the cast are introduced in depth later in the story, it is largely a story about three men – an American missionary and both an American and a Chinese soldier - and a strong-willed Chinese woman who lives her life in the poor, mountainous, tea-growing area of southeast China’s Zhejiang Province.The writing is very good but you will not find the detailed cultural and scenic descriptions of Lisa See or Pearl S. Buck, two other novelists with strong literary connections to China. This is a book about the human condition set in the Japanese Occupation of World War II. It is not about the war, however, in any literal sense. War is a powerful backdrop for writers who want to explore the human condition because it compresses and exaggerates our humanity to vivid and inescapable extremes.I particularly liked two things about the storyline and both are, in my experience, indicative of the Chinese worldview. The first is that the relationships are not overly romanticized. There is love, but it is not the kind of love you would find in many of the romantic novels of the West. And that is, in part, because of the importance of pragmatism in the Chinese worldview. As much as they worship their ancestors, the Chinese aren’t generally consumed by why the past turned out as it did. Revenge may be appropriate, but it is a revenge defined by effect, or outcome, not cause.Not surprisingly, therefore, there is very little revenge in this tale of much suffering. The characters move on, if not always to greener pastures.There is, as a result, a lot to be learned about the best way to live our own lives in these pages. Think of it as more than a book meant to entertain the reader. It just might help you lead a better life through its tragedy.

My first contact with the art of Zhang Ling. Certainly not my last. Three ghosts meet in the remote village where they spent the WW2, to tell the story of one woman. A cativating and powerfull narrative, a kind of Rashomon, not about a murder, but about lost love. A novel that unfortunately was not published in Brazil yet.

A Single Swallow is an extraordinarily moving and compelling novel of love, loss, and redemption. In her beautifully crafted language, Zhang Ling presents readers with a poignant picture of the war through the personal stories of three men and a woman, whose lives have been changed permanently by the war.What I find most striking about the novel is “the cruelty of living” (p.116) that the title protagonist Ah Yan (Swallow) has to bear after the brutal rape by the Japanese. It broke my heart when I read her immense shame, pain, and suffering every step of the way. However, Ah Yan’s strength and struggle are empowering. In an agonizing way, she accomplishes her “metamorphosis from pupa to butterfly” (p.139) and embodies love, compassion, and endurance. Even for Liu Zhaohu who abandons her several times, she forgives him and saves him during the political turmoil.The story is told from multiple perspectives and resembles an intriguing jigsaw puzzle waiting to be put together by readers.

Ok

I read Ling Zhang’s A Single Swallow in the original before reading this fabulous English translation. The novel is set in China during WWII. The storyline is fantastic: the tale of the woman protagonist, Ah Yan, is told by three dead men, which reminds me of the multi-narrators in As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. What Ah Yan goes through during the war is brutal, but these tragedies can’t destroy her; she grows into a strong and independent woman while overcoming all barriers from the social tradition that shackles women. The vivid details make the characters real and come to life. The novel reflects a history that the Americans helped the Chinese during the Sino-Japanese War.

I great and well written book and translation