'These days, you have to pay the government nine thousand yuan to be born and two thousand yuan to die,' says Father, taking off his glasses and rubbing his tired eyes. 'The gates of hell aren't somewhere far beneath us. They're right here on earth.'

Independent Foreign Fiction Award 2014.

"The Dark Road follows the river-borne escape of fugitives from the one-child policy. An ill-matched couple's flight along anarchic backwaters leads them into a raw, brutal, brilliantly depicted boom-time underworld" -- Boyd Tonkin Independent "One of China's most prominent dissident voices addresses the bleak effects of the one-child policy in this striking novel, in which the brutality of social engineering is made graphically plain. Ma Jian's work is banned in China; this unflinching portrait of one woman's struggle against oppression makes it sadly easy to understand why" New Statesman "[Ma Jian's] characterization is superb. A devastating critique of China's oppressive communist regime" Mail on Sunday "Unforgettable" -- Stephen Abell Sunday Telegraph "Ma's work is a vital corrective and he writes here with insistent, focused anger" -- Siobhan Murphy Metro