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 Editorial
Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered
Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending
hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant
villages for "re-education." This moving,
often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself
re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather
years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature
to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist
and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons,
and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain
village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill.
Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two
friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman
commands them to put on "oral cinema shows"
for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of
movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains,
the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books
he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call
the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of
European writers, they dare to tell the story of The
Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read
Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo,
who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming
her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated
lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his
expectations, but the result is not what he might have
hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant
conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and
the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this
slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale.
From Booklist
Stories set in China during the Cultural Revolution
usually follow a trail of human struggle and tragedy,
but this little gem of a book spins magic thread out
of broken dreams. Already a best-seller in France and
slated for release in 19 countries, this novel is the
story of two whimsical young men ordered to the countryside
for reeducation as a result of their parents' political
designation as "class enemies." Assigned the
revolting task of carrying buckets of excrement up a
hillside for the peasant farmers, the boys design a
venue of storytelling sessions and quickly earn the
headman's leniency in return. When they meet the local
tailor's beautiful daughter, the luminescent Little
Seamstress, and discover a wealth of forbidden Western
books, life on the hillside takes a brighter turn. His
book is truly enchanting, written with the rhythm of
a fable. Dai Sijie is himself a survivor of that fateful
time in China's history, yet he incorporates delightful
humor into sketching his innovative cast of characters.
From Library Journal
This deceptively small
novel has the power to bring down governments. In Mao's
China, the Cultural Revolution rages, and two friends
caught in the flames find themselves shuttled off to
the remote countryside for reeducation. The stolid narrator
occasionally comforts himself by playing the violin,
and both he and more outgoing friend Luo find that they
have a talent for entertaining others with their re-creations
of films they have seen. A little light comes their
way when they meet the stunning daughter of the tailor
in the town nearby, with whom Luo launches an affair.
But the real coup is discovering a cache of forbidden
Western literature including, of course, Balzac that
forces open their world like a thousand flowers blooming.
The literature proves their undoing, however, finally
losing them the one thing that has sustained them. Dai
Sijie, who was himself reeducated in early 1970s China
before fleeing to France, wonderfully communicates the
awesome power of literature of which his novel is proof.
Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
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