I never bothered about this tiny pungent bulb until last week. The pillow doesn't seem to listen to the calls of my weary neck and the tang of crisp garlic slowly creeps into the room as I recollect my early dinner. Every living soul has slipped into a deep slumber and all there is to hear is the murmur of my breathing. It’s 3am and there is nothing but darkness around me. It is also a delicate story of love between man and woman, father and child, friend and friend-and the struggle to maintain that love despite overwhelming obstacles. The Garlic Ballads is a powerful vision of life under the heel of an inflexible and uncaring government. Meanwhile, a blind minstrel incites the masses to take the law into their own hands, and a riot of apocalyptic proportions follows with savage and unforgettable consequences. The prisoners languish in horrifying conditions in their cells, with only their strength of character and thoughts of their loved ones to save them from madness.

Families are destroyed by the random imprisonment of young and old for supposed crimes against the state. A surplus on the garlic market ensues, and the farmers must watch in horror as their crops wither and rot in the fields. Warehouses fill up, taxes skyrocket, and government officials maltreat even those who have traveled for days to sell their harvest. The Communist government has encouraged them to plant garlic, but selling the crop is not as simple as they believed.

The farmers of Paradise County have been leading a hardscrabble life unchanged for generations.

The garlic ballads