Amazon Synopsis:-

In 1971 Mao's campaign against the intellectuals is at its height. Our narrator and his best friend, Luo, distinctly unintellectual but guilty of being the sons of doctors, have been sent to a remote mountain village to be 'reeducated'. The kind of education that takes place among the peasants of Phoenix Mountain involves carting buckets of excrement up and down precipitous, foggy paths, but the two seventeen-year-olds have a violin and their sense of humour to keep them going. Further distraction is provided by the attractive daughter of the local tailor, possessor of a particularly fine pair of feet. Their true re-education starts, however, when they discover a comrade's hidden stash of classics of great nineteenth-century Western literature - Balzac, Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy and others, in Chinese translation. They need all their ingenuity to get their hands on the forbidden books, but when they do their lives are turned upside down. And not only their lives: after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, the Little Seamstress will never be the same again.

Without betraying the truth of what happened, Dai Sijie transforms the bleak events of China's Cultural Revolution into an enchanting and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit and the magical power of great storytelling.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Taking to the London meetup this evening

I really enjoyed this book. It's a slight story of life for two young 'intellectuals' sent to the countryside to be 're-educated' in the 70s China of Mao Tse-Tung. The vicissitudes of life in the country, the privations they are forced to endure are well described, as is their courage in overcoming them and the help afforded from two unlikely sources - 18th and 19th Century European literature and the love and support of a beautiful young seamstress in a nearby village.

The ending of the book is a trifle unconvincing. Either the author (himself a victim of 're-education') ran out of ideas, or he wished to leave room for a sequel. Reading this at the same time as the Olympic Games provided an interesting counterpoint to current issues of human rights in China and a measure of how far this country has progressed over the past 30 years or so.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Given to a friend as a RABK

Passed to me by stoatonstilts

Enjoyed the read. Theme of the book was interesting. However, I was a bit disappointed with the ending. I would have liked to have known what happened to the two boys who were being "re-educated". I think the little seamstress would have had a few problems aspiring to the life she had read about in the books!