Toronto-based author Zhang Ling believes a certain separation from the geography of the story and from her birth land and its history gives her a sharper insight. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Stories by Toronto-based author Zhang Ling, 58, know how to enter the readers' hearts and leave an impression that demands more pages to turn even when the book is finished.

Aftershock, a graphic tale of choices amid the massive Tangshan earthquake in northern China in 1976, so impressed director Feng Xiaogang that it was turned into a blockbuster in 2010.

Zhang's latest novel, Birth Throes, received wide critical acclaim including from Writers Publishing House veteran editor Wang Shuyuan. Closer to home, Wang's daughter in her 20s, found the draft difficult to put down even before it was published.

Covering a span from 1942 to 2008, Birth Throes features three mothers from four generations in a Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, family who experienced the joys as well as pains of birth against a backdrop of upheaval.

"The novel has really masterful storytelling, which is rare in contemporary works," Wang said.

"My daughter, of the so-called 1990s generation, said she was fascinated and could totally sympathize with the women's pain and joy in the story."

Living outside of the country, Zhang has been depicting part of the Chinese experience in her mother language for more than 20 years.