Sons of Heaven: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Grandfather believed in warriors, and dragons..." (more)
Key Phrases: recent turmoil, Deng Xiaoping, Chang'an Avenue, Red Guards (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With Sons of Heaven, Terrence Cheng has crafted a personal and insightful look into the Tiananmen Square massacre and its participants. Inspired by the famous footage of the unknown man who stopped the tanks, Cheng creates a conjectural history for him in the character of Xiao-Di, an intelligent, opinionated young man raised by his grandparents in Beijing. The father of Xiao-Di's girlfriend, a supervisor at the employment bureau, helps him receive a scholarship to study at Cornell. After ending the relationship and returning to Beijing, Xiao-Di finds himself blacklisted from employment. Idealistic and angry, he joins the growing student movement centered in Tiananmen. Cheng intersects the narrative with Xiao-Di's brother Lu, a bitter, vicious soldier later ordered to capture him, and the character of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, combining history and speculation in an attempt to understand the violent response to the protests. With patience and understatement, Cheng offers a sympathetic glimpse into each man's inner life and motivations, revealing their shared experiences and tragedies. The author humanizes these stories with just the right amount of quietly stunning detail in his assured, elegant prose, such as the "sparkles over the Mao pins" on Lu's boyhood uniform, or in Deng's evocative dreams:

Here is a wolf-faced Mao, lean and sharp-eyed, his hair long and wavy framing the sides of his face. He smokes cigarette after cigarette, blowing clouds into the air of the blue night.… Mao stands with a rifle and blasts a shot into the night, and in the purple drop of evening stars shatter and rocket the sky.

A haunting, rare book, Sons of Heaven communicates the basic humanity of these characters and the true cost of their conflict. --Ross Doll --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Centering around the Tiananmen Square massacre and its aftermath, this remarkably structured and textured debut epic seeks to attach a face to the mysterious man who, by stepping in front of the rolling army tanks, became the most recognizable symbol of the massacres. Cheng succeeds in his endeavor, and in the process he gives China a face as well¢one so vivid and provocative it's hard to walk away without a fresh impression of the massacre, the 13 years since, and modern-day China in general. Three months before the massacre, Xiao-Di returns to China after spending four years at Cornell University, where he fell in love with a blonde American girl who left him upon graduation. But he has tasted freedom and his return to China is turbulent. He cannot find work. He grapples with the way the masses adhere to tradition and respect authority. He lives with his grandparents (his parents are dead) and when not at home feeling angry and confused, he is out with his friend Wong, bleakly contemplating the future. Then, through the eyes of president Deng Xiaoping, we enter Tiananmen Square, where students have begun protesting. Cheng successfully humanizes the person he has called a complicated man, driven by a genuine passion to create a better society for the Chinese people. Xiao-Di soon finds himself impulsively partaking in a hunger strike and, before long, facing down a tank. Complicating matters is his brother, Lu, a Chinese soldier who is sent with a unit to find Xiao-Di. Through the brothers and their grandparents, a multifaceted and sophisticated portrait of the Chinese people is rendered. This is a rare find: historical and political without being pedantic, and briskly entertaining without being cheap, simplistic or contrived.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (May 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060002441
• ISBN-13: 978-0060002442
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #706,897 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive and thrilling debut novel, May 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sons of Heaven: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989 left in its wake scores of casualties and haunting images that aired again and again on international television. SONS OF HEAVEN, Terrence Cheng's first novel, is remarkable in many ways, but mostly, centrally, for its thrilling ability to imagine the life of the now famous (but still unidentified) young man who dared to step in the path of an approaching government tank.

Cheng gracefully interweaves three distinct points of view in a way that ultimately humanizes China's complex modern history. We are privy to the point of view of that young, skinny boy (named Xiano-Di in the novel), of Xiano-Di's brother Lu (who is a soldier in the army) and also, most daringly, of Deng Xiaoping.

The passages from Deng's perspective are gripping. Deng is a riveting character: he is a revealed as a complicated man, full anger, sadness, and humanity. With Cheng's portrayal of Deng, he manages to articulate the passion, motivation, and desire for freedom and power that fuels all revolutionary acts.

We should never forget the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Now that we have this impressive and thrilling debut novel, the powerful images from 1989 will haunt us anew.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A bold first novel, August 11, 2003

By	"efchay" (Potomac, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sons of Heaven: A Novel (Hardcover)

Terrence Cheng writes a bold new novel re-imagining the circumstances surrounding the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He has boldly (and some would say presumptuously) fictionalized the accounts of the man who famously held up a column of People's Army tanks by merely standing in front of them, and that of Deng Xiaopeng. Both of these stories would be difficult to tell in the hands of a lesser writer, but Cheng pulls it off admirably.

The novel isn't so much about the Tiananmen uprising as it is about how the uprising affected the main characters. That said, perhaps the most important scene in the book (holding up the column of tanks) comes too soon in the narrative. After reading that dramatic sequence, everything else that follows falls flat. It's no coincidence that Cheng's narrative loses steam in the beginning of the second half of the book.

That said, "Sons of Heaven" is an important work and an impressive debut novel.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Creative Yet Convincing Historical Fiction, October 19, 2002

By	Matthew M. Yau "Voracious reader" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sons of Heaven: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Tienanmen crackdown in 1989 still makes my heart tremble. The book cover jacket showing a man confronting in front of the tank stirs me. Cheng's debut novel is a historical fiction interwoven with three parties: The dissident (Xiao-Di, meaning little brother), the soldier (Lu), and the comrade (the late Deng Xiaoping). The novel traced events leading to the Tienanmen masscre and the pursuit of fugitive and student protest leaders afterwards. The book brings alive struggles of common "laobaishung" (peasants) families and the their toil for democracy. Cheng also cunningly humanize the former Communist leader Deng Xiaoping.

Cheng has done a phenomenonal job in bridging these three characters together. Little brother Xiaodi, the once study-aboard elite, becomes infatuated with the democratic student movement and confronts in front of tanker. Xaiopi later on becomes fugitive accused of overturning the Communist Party. Lu, Xiaodi's older brother, serves on the 38th Troop of the People Liberation Army, raids through his grandparents' house and remote village in search of the suspect. Comrade Deng is portraited more as humanistic than many have thought. His interaction with Pufang, his immobile son, makes him somewhat more likable. A good read.