Zhang Xianliang was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in 1936. At the age of 19, he moved to the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and began to write. In 1957, he was sentenced to 20 years in a labor camp after publishing a poem critical of the authorities.

After his release in 1979, he began to write novels depicting life in the harsh environment of Northwest China and his experiences in the labor camp.

His work, including Half of Man is Woman and Grass Soup, has been translated into more than 30 languages, and Zhang has become one of the most important writers in modern China. He currently lives in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia.