Hardback
Description
One of the most-talked about works of fiction to emerge from China in recent years, this novel about an urban youth "displaced" to a small village in rural China during the Cultural Revolution is a fictionalized portrait of the author's own experience as a young man.
Han Shaogong was one of millions of students relocated from cities and towns to live and work alongside peasant farmers in an effort to create a classless society.
Translated into English for the first time, Han's novel is an exciting experiment in form-structured as a dictionary of the Maqiao dialect-through which he seeks to understand and translate the local life and customs of his strange new home. Han encounters an upside-down world among the people of Maqiao: a con man dupes his neighbors into thinking that he has found the fountain of youth by convincing them that his father is in fact his son; to be scientific" is to be lazy; time and relationships are understood using the language of food and its preparation; and to die young is considered "sweet," while the aged reckon their lives to be "cheap."As entries build one upon another, Han meditates on the ability of a waidi ren (outsider) to represent the ways of life of another community.
In this light, the Communist effort to control the language and history of a people whose words and past are bound together in ineluctably local ways emerges as an often comical, sometimes tragic exercise in miscommunication.
Information
-
Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:400 pages
- Publisher:Columbia University Press
- Publication Date:02/07/2003
- Category:
- ISBN:9780231127448
Information
-
Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:400 pages
- Publisher:Columbia University Press
- Publication Date:02/07/2003
- Category:
- ISBN:9780231127448