Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
DDC/MDS
| 813 |
Description
Every week, a writer of political propaganda and a professional blood donor meet for dinner. They are unlikely friends - one of them tortured by his 'art', the other fat and wealthy from the earthy business of providing spare blood for the citizens of China. Over the course of one especially gastronomic evening, the writer starts to complain about his latest Party commission: the story of an ordinary soldier who sacrifices his life to the revolutionary cause. This is not the novel he wants to write, he tells his friend. Inside his head lives an unwritten book about the people he knows or sees everyday on the streets - people who lives are far more representative of the world in which he lives...
User reviews
LibraryThing member Limelite
A satirical look at post-Maoist but probably pre-capitalist China.
Two friends meet for dinner, get drunk and talk. One is a writer of political propaganda, the other a professional blood donor. [Not so symbolic and highly symbolic "professions."] The writer recounts stories he would create, had he
The novel is constructed around the wanna be novelist's stories that are bridged by the satirical and witty comments of the blood donor. The people who exist in the imagining of the writer lead lives “pulled and pummeled by fate and politics as if they were in the hands of a noodle maker.”
Warm, engaging, bitingly humorous, and devastating. Great read that illustrates grim reality as well as astonishing resilience of the Chinese people living under a government that stifles individuality, smothers personal initiative, and punishes originality The style seems less traditional novel and more like a necklace of vignettes, each pearl of a story linked by the intervening conversational commentary and thoughts of the frustrated writer and the assertive blood donor.
Two friends meet for dinner, get drunk and talk. One is a writer of political propaganda, the other a professional blood donor. [Not so symbolic and highly symbolic "professions."] The writer recounts stories he would create, had he
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the courage. The other campaigns to be the subject for his friends new assignment – to write a Communist Hero tale to inspire the worker bees.The novel is constructed around the wanna be novelist's stories that are bridged by the satirical and witty comments of the blood donor. The people who exist in the imagining of the writer lead lives “pulled and pummeled by fate and politics as if they were in the hands of a noodle maker.”
Warm, engaging, bitingly humorous, and devastating. Great read that illustrates grim reality as well as astonishing resilience of the Chinese people living under a government that stifles individuality, smothers personal initiative, and punishes originality The style seems less traditional novel and more like a necklace of vignettes, each pearl of a story linked by the intervening conversational commentary and thoughts of the frustrated writer and the assertive blood donor.
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LibraryThing member RajivC
This book is set somewhere in the times that China was coming out of the Mao era, and details the changes in society taking place at that time, through a series of stories of the people at the time.
The stories seem to take place in the background of dinner conversations between two friends, the
The stories are dark, quirky and somewhat eccentric. I would not say that they are terribly clear or interesting or amusing, however. A bit obtuse, and could have been much better and sarcastic
I went in with hope, and came out a bit disappointed.
The stories seem to take place in the background of dinner conversations between two friends, the
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writer and the blood donor.The stories are dark, quirky and somewhat eccentric. I would not say that they are terribly clear or interesting or amusing, however. A bit obtuse, and could have been much better and sarcastic
I went in with hope, and came out a bit disappointed.
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LibraryThing member aryadeschain
Although this book gives you several glances of the "less pretty" side of the Chinese culture, I must say that I found it dull, boring and awfully pornographic.
The book's main story is one of two guys who meet once in a week to share meat and mead, using this opportunity to discuss a couple of
The book is not fixed on the conversation between this two characters: it shifts through the story of several people belonging to lower classes of the Chinese quotidian. The stories aren't completely bad, but I did not enjoy the writing style and the way the stories were told. Even though they are easy to understand, all of them are somewhat chaotic, don't seem to have a purpose or meaning and gosh, I have yet to see that much pornography in a book that is NOT supposed to be focused on people's sexual lives (which are portrayed in a very gruesome manner, by the way). I wish I was joking about it, but the author actually dedicates a whole chapter in the book to talk about women's breasts.
While I do understand that Chinese culture is sexually repressed, I still didn't find any of the sex scenes necessary in the story. Ma Jian also seems to be quite obsessed by the low and grotesque characteristics that humanize people, such as peeing, taking a dump, stinking and stuff like that, which appear very, very frequently.
This is a book that probably portrays China as it really is, from the point of view of poor people with decades of political oppression, which doesn't necessarily make it a good book. At least not one that I would recommend.
The book's main story is one of two guys who meet once in a week to share meat and mead, using this opportunity to discuss a couple of
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aspects of the world around them. One of the guys is a blood donor by profession, the other is a writer who has absolutely no brilliant ideas for his book about the government. Apparently what give the book its name is the fact that nearby where they meet (the writer's apartment) there is a restaurant that makes fish soup and the smell of it always invades the place. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly is the meaning of it and its relevance on the whole story, but the metaphor must be really good because I still haven't thought about any relations between them and, frankly, I don't think I'm even slightly interested in knowing it.The book is not fixed on the conversation between this two characters: it shifts through the story of several people belonging to lower classes of the Chinese quotidian. The stories aren't completely bad, but I did not enjoy the writing style and the way the stories were told. Even though they are easy to understand, all of them are somewhat chaotic, don't seem to have a purpose or meaning and gosh, I have yet to see that much pornography in a book that is NOT supposed to be focused on people's sexual lives (which are portrayed in a very gruesome manner, by the way). I wish I was joking about it, but the author actually dedicates a whole chapter in the book to talk about women's breasts.
While I do understand that Chinese culture is sexually repressed, I still didn't find any of the sex scenes necessary in the story. Ma Jian also seems to be quite obsessed by the low and grotesque characteristics that humanize people, such as peeing, taking a dump, stinking and stuff like that, which appear very, very frequently.
This is a book that probably portrays China as it really is, from the point of view of poor people with decades of political oppression, which doesn't necessarily make it a good book. At least not one that I would recommend.
Show Less
Original publication date
1991
ISBN
0312424795 / 9780312424794