Up the Creek Book Club
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© 2000 Kathy Craig |
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Dai Sijie
June 2003
Synopsis
"In 1971 Mao's campaign against the intellectuals is at its height. Our narrator and his best friend, Luo, distinctly unintellectual but guilty of being the sons of doctors, have been sent to a remote mountain village to be 're-educated'. The kind of education that takes place among the peasants of Phoenix Mountain involves carting buckets of excrement up and down preciptous, foggy paths, but the two seventeen-year-olds have a violin and their sense of humor to keep them going. Further distraction is provided by the attractive daughter of the local tailor, possessor of a particularly fine pair of feet.
Their true re-education starts, however, when they discover a comrade's hidden stash of classics of great nineteenth-century Western literature - Balzac, Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy and others, in Chinese translation. They need all their ingenuity to get their hands on the forbidden books, but when they do their lives are turned upside down. And not only their lives; after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, the Little Seamstress will never be the same again." (Publisher)
Reviews
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"A funny, touching, sly and altogether delightful novel." (Washington Post Book World)
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"Set in a rural Chinese province in the early 1970s, during the horrifying period of Communist "reeducation" known as the Cultural Revolution, Sijie's book tells the story of two privileged friends forced into a life of backbreaking labor for the state. Because their parents are doctors, the boys become objects of relentless suspicion, making their chances of parole unlikely. They have only their wits, and their mutual love of storytelling, to help them survive. After the boys find a box of contraband Western literature in Chinese translation, they begin discussing the stories with an unschooled seamstress. It's a bold move that becomes the turning point of their lives. Sijie's novel has all the makings of a great story: strong-willed, sympathetic heroes faced with tremendous obstacles, who are unwilling to compromise their ideals; a clear-cut antagonist; and even a little romance. High-minded yet accessible and engaging, the book touts the redemptive powers of self-expression. Despite the dark setting, it has elements of enchantment and exoticism."
(Kevin Greenberg, Book Magazine)
Book Club Rating and Comments
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