Řezníkova žena – Ang Li (2013)

The book 'The Butcher's Wife' is based on a true event from Shanghai in the 1940s. Li Ang's tragic fate of a woman oppressed by traditional society to the point of being driven to murder her own husband immediately captivated. In this, her very first novella, Li Ang describes not only the exploitative nature of traditional marriage but also, particularly through the character A-wang-kuan, the cruelty of some women whose repressed sexuality transforms them into accomplices of a patriarchal society in the persecution and oppression of other women. Contemporary Czech readers might find it hard to imagine the uproar the novella caused among readers and critics when it was first published in Taiwan in the early 1980s. Although 'The Butcher's Wife' won the United Daily newspaper's award for the best novella of the year in 1983, when it began to be published in installments in the literary supplement of a periodical, it had to be quickly withdrawn. At a time when sexuality was still more or less a social taboo, Li Ang shocked with her naturalistic descriptions and the openness with which she depicts sexual coercion and the brutality with which butcher Chen treats his wife. Even now, thirty years after its publication, this remarkable work remains an important part of...