Brothers

At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the powerful General Ding Long fathers two sons whose lives begin at opposite ends of the new political order. Tan, the legitimate child, grows up amid privilege in Beijing and is prepared to inherit his father’s influence. Shento, abandoned after his mother’s death, is raised by healers and then sent to a brutal orphanage, where hunger and resentment turn his thoughts toward the father who denied him. Neither knows the other exists, yet both become attached to Sumi Wo.

After Mao Zedong’s death, the brothers follow China’s changing routes to power: military and state security for Shento, entrepreneurship and reform-era wealth for Tan. Their family histories, political loyalties and rivalry over Sumi draw them toward the pro-democracy movement and a final convergence at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The novel uses an intergenerational family saga to connect private betrayal with the transition from revolutionary hierarchy to market reform and renewed state repression.