Jia's novel: Spotlight on rural pain

Jia Pingwa. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Jia Pingwa's new novel, Ji Hua, narrates the story of a woman who is freed after three years of being abducted.

The author, who won the Mao Dun Literature Prize, China's top literary award, for his earlier novel Qin Qiang (Qinqiang Opera), has named his latest book after an imaginary flower.

Ji Hua is the tale of Hu Die, a girl from a poor rural family who accompanies her single mother to the city. But her urban dreams are soon shattered as she is abducted by a group of people, taken to a village and sold to a family. Raped by Hei Liang, a member of that family, she lives through her troubles until her mother rescues her with the help of police and a reporter.

But the seeming end of the ordeal doesn't leave her happy. She returns to the same village to reunite with her baby boy whose biological father is her former captor.

"When I wrote the ending, I wrote it as a start, another start of Hu Die's journey," Jia, 64, tells his audience at a recent ceremony in Beijing to launch his book, which has been published by People's Literature Publishing House.