Frog is a novel by Mo Yan, first released in 2009. The novel is about Gugu, the aunt of "Tadpole", the novel's narrator. Gugu performs various abortions after the One Child Policy is introduced. The novel discusses both the reasons why the policy was implemented and the consequences of it. It was translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, foremost translator of contemporary Chinese literature and former research professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame. He served as Mo Yan's longtime English translator. In Mandarin Chinesethe word for frog, 蛙, sounds similar to the sound made by a baby, and the narrator's name means "tadpole". Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the conflicts between the government abortion planners, who believe that they are doing the right thing, and the prospective parents makes Frog a "startlingly dramatic book". Steven Moore of the Washington Post wrote that since the novel includes scenes of anguish, Frog "is no polemic supporting the necessary if heartless one-child policy."
Plot
Gugu, born in 1937, is the first modern midwife in Tadpole's town. She had fallen in love with an air force pilot in 1960, but the officer went to Taiwan. The novel is divided into five parts, each part being a letter by Tadpole to a Japanese professor. Following a recent visit the professor requests more information about his Aunt's career. Told through flashbacks interspersed with his reflections, Tadpole takes us through his memories of Gugu's life. Later the novel catches up to present day and follows less of Gugu and more of Tadpole himself.
Reception
Julia Lovell of The New York Times wrote that comparisons to The Dark Road by Ma Jian, also about abortions in China, would be inevitable; she argued that the two novels are seemingly different but after "a careful reading" but in fact "Both describe a country that has lost its way, a land in which a repressive state has rendered individuals incapable of making independent moral judgments about political, economic and social behavior and in which women continue to suffer at the hands of reckless male politicians and son-fixated husbands."
