| A Dictionary of Maqiao Contributor(s): Han, Shaogong (Author), Lovell, Julia (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0231127448 ISBN-13: 9780231127448 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $36.63 Product Type: Hardcover Published: July 2003 Annotation: 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 authors own experience as a young man. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2002041712 |
| Series: Weatherhead Books on Asia |
| Physical Information: 0.95" H x 6.32" W x 9.22" (1.29 lbs) 400 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Chinese |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher 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. |