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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
At the height of Mao’s infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for “re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violin—as well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor.
But it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed. 
From within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      When two boys discover a suitcase of banned Western literature (translated) during their re-education in the remote countryside of China, anything is possible. Enlightenment falls upon the Cultural Revolution with thunder and drums, depicting as well the glory of carnal love and, more subtly, the idea of individualism. Both boys retell the stories to the villagers and earn recognition from the elders, as well as from the beautiful little seamstress. Read with the tenderness it deserves by B.D. Wong, the tale unfolds to inter-mingle East and West with touching results. This is a book that can be listened to over and over to hear the missed inflections and the astonishingly vivid details. B.H.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, Winner of 2004 ALA/ YALSA Recording (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 27, 2001
      The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo
      to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale. (Sept. 17)Forecast:Sijie's debut was a best-seller and prize winner in France in 2000, and rights have been sold in 19 countries; it is also scheduled to be made into a film. Its charm translates admirably—strong sales can be expected on this side of the Atlantic.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:9-12

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