A 1930s Shanghai case of a woman who murdered her husband inspired Li Ang to write this deep and harrowing novel that was an outrageous literary sensation. In a small coastal Taiwanese town, the pig butcher"s brutality towards his new young wife knows no bounds. She becomes scorned by her neighbors who condemn her for screaming aloud. Lin Shin, isolated, despairing, is finally driven to madness and kills him with his own meat cleaver. "May be the most frightening book ever written about women oppressed by men"--Los Angeles Times.