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September 1, 2004
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie
During China's cultural revolution, two best friends, sons of prominent intellectual families, are shipped off to countryside to live and work as peasants. Their daily routine is hopeless, hard, dangerous, and dull until they secretly obtain a Chinese translation of a Balzac novel, filled with romance and adventure. They memorize the story and use it to impress and educate a pretty local village girl with whom they are both infatuated.
Dai Sijie's novella, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, transports you to a remote village in China in the early 1970s where this little drama of love and hope is played out. You can almost touch it - the fields, the mountain cliffs, the opressing drugery, and the comical naiveté of villagers who become entranced with an alarm clock. It is lovingly written and translated from the original French. The author, Dai Sijie, was born in China, lived through the Cultural Revolution, and emigrated to France in 1984. At the conclusion of the book, the story all comes together; so if you wonder, "where is this going?" while you read it, as I did, don't worry, it will all make sense. It's not quite a novel, more like a long short story. A good read, I highly recommend it.
Posted by elise at 6:18 PM
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