The novels reveal a magical world to them-a place where they retreat inside their minds to find love, freedom, and everything else that has been banned from them in the Cultural Revolution. Finally, Ma and Luo steal the books on the night Four-Eyes leaves the countryside. When they discover that an acquaintance named Four-Eyes has a hidden suitcase full of forbidden books, they try to wheedle and coerce him to lend them Western novels to no avail. However, the boys never give up their exuberant, rebellious spirits. The main character, Ma, and his friend Luo are forced to labor in fields and mines, working for the proletariat in order to be released from their reeducation. This semi-autobiography tells a story of two teenage boys finding hardship, forbidden western literature, and love in an isolated countryside. The author, Dai Sijie, was “reeducated” during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. If you enjoy works of literature that take you to another place and time, then this is the one for you. The strange title piqued my curiosity, and my intuition told me that this book was worth reading.
I discovered this tiny book buried under others on the shelf.
And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed.įrom within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling.Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. Their meager distractions include a violin-as well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor.īut it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. An enchanting literary debut-already an international best-seller.Īt the height of Mao’s infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for “re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths.
0 kommentar(er)
