Iris flower

The events of the novel revolve around Malan, who belongs to the Chinese Hui nationality, and has absorbed their customs and traditions. Her father loses her tuition fees at the gambling table, thus losing her hope of enrolling in university. In the midst of her sorrows, she feels that she is skipping the last chapter in the story of her youth, which passed quickly. She becomes a wife and suffers a lot of indescribable suffering. From here, it begins to display the wife's feelings as she serves others and experiences the pain of pregnancy and childbirth. She enters into a psychological and mental conflict about the nature of women and men. She presents questions and tries to answer them in a free dialogue with the reader. She emerges from her struggles with life in its stages and what she faces at each stage to a degree of maturity that she could not have reached except through going through these pains, so that her maturity is complete and its details are consistent. This novel is by the Chinese writer Ma Jinlian, who won the Lushun Prize for Literature in 2018. Translated from Chinese by: Baraa Badr.