Rose Dust

Rose Dust: Even the humblest dust holds a flower that refuses to wither. A red name on the ancestral stele marks a "living" dead man. He changed his name four times, from a beggar on Black Pine Ridge to the front lines of the Anti-Japanese War, with a scar on his left cheek and a limp in his right leg, bringing back a clump of wild roses from Pingyin through the chaos of war. A century later, descendants kneel before the stele, only to realize they have been reading the story of their own ancestor, chewed up by war and quietly warmed by time. The story unfolds in multiple voices, told in relay by different people: Modern frame: The mysterious contributor Old Yuan actually restrains the narrator "I"'s pen—"The storyteller is controlled by the characters in the story—this is the most ingenious meta-narrative setting in the book, keeping the modern family search firmly in the position of a 'bystander.'" Family legend and Anti-Japanese War mainline: Where Fourth Granduncle stops, Sichuan Army veteran Chen Sanqin and Old Yuan take over. Clues run through the book: The same person, four names, four time periods, stitched together by the same left cheek scar, the same limp, the same Taishan stone, and the same phrase "Zhanlu Terrace." Old Yuan's true identity is none other than Zhiheng, the former disciple of Heng Wuji, narrating his master's family war history from afar. — Description from novelcodex.org