| A Dictionary of Maqiao Contributor(s): Shaogong, Han (Author), Lovell, Julia (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0385339356 ISBN-13: 9780385339353 Publisher: Dial Press OUR PRICE: $15.30 Product Type: Paperback Published: September 2005 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 author's own experience as a young man. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Historical - General - Fiction | Epistolary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 1.01" H x 5.27" W x 8.22" (1.02 lbs) 416 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1960's - Cultural Region - Chinese - Demographic Orientation - Rural - Sex & Gender - Masculine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: From the daring imagination of one of China's greatest living novelists comes a work of startling power and originality-the story of a young man "displaced" to a small village in rural China during the 1960s. Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold invention-and a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution. Entries trace the wisdom and absurdities of Maqiao: the petty squabbles, family grudges, poverty, infidelities, fantasies, lunatics, bullies, superstitions, and especially the odd logic in their use of language-where the word for "beginning" is the same as the word for "end"; "little big brother" means older sister; to be "scientific" means to be lazy; and "streetsickness" is a disease afflicting villagers visiting urban areas. Filled with colorful characters-from a weeping ox to a man so poisonous that snakes die when they bite him-A Dictionary of Maqiao is both an important work of Chinese literature and a probing inquiry into the extraordinary power of language. |