The Executioner Eryi

The Executioner Eryi is a collection of novellas and short stories by the Tibetan writer A Lai, published in 2015 by Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House as part of the "A Lai's Novellas and Short Stories" series, containing nine works and regarded as a "side volume" to the novel Red Poppies. The book is set against the rise and collapse of the chieftain system in the Kham Tibetan region: the chieftain family kept a line of hereditary executioners, "Eryi" being their name and the mark of their slave status. The title novella follows the fate of the executioner family, portraying the establishment of law in the chieftain era, the war over poppies and the strife between brothers, and the tearing of the executioner father and son between violent duty and human attachment, ending in patricide and a elegiac conclusion for the last executioner of the chieftain's house. In "The Silversmith in the Moonlight," the gifted silversmith Daze flees rather than serve the chieftain and dies for stealing silver, yet folk legend says he rose to the sky on the moon he himself forged. Other stories—"Fish," "Gela Grows Up," "The Old House," "Locust Blossoms," "Snow Light on the Ringing Mountains," "Oda's Horse Caravan," and "The Latest Revenge Story About the Forest"—tell of the boy Gela, an old hunter, avengers, a horse caravan, and people on the forest frontier, struggling between ignorance and awakening. Blending the magical and the real, the works present Tibetan cultural traits and, above every pool of blood and suffering, leave a spark kindled by wind and fire.