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Winner of Club Med's first annual International Book Award
An enchanting literary debut—already an international best-seller.
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.
"I opened Dai Sijie's Balzac
and the Little
Chinese
Seamstress
expecting a book
that would be at
best earnest and
well meaning; the
tale of two city
boys, sent to the
provinces in 1971
during the Cultural
Revolution, sounds
like your
standard-issue
Chinese tract in
fictive form. Yet
make no mistake:
This is a funny,
touching, sly and
altogether
delightful
novel . . . ironic and
wistful. . . . Though
salted with wit and
slapstick humor,
Balzac and the
Little Chinese
Seamstress is
basically a romance,
a novel about the
power of art to
enlarge our
imaginations, no
matter what the
circumstances . . .
If one novel about
Mao's China can be
as terrific as this
one, there must be
others as well."
--Michael Dirda, The
Washington Post Book
World
"A simple
story, seductively
told . . . What
marks it out is the
way it touches and
lifts up the beauty
of human experience
far beyond the
mountains of Western
China in which the
story is set."
--Justin Hill,
Times Literary
Supplement
"A
mesmerizing story,
classic and new,
fabulist and gritty
in its realism, full
of riches as in the
best of tales. My
imagination and
heart were
seized." --Amy
Tan
"Few
if any books that
are mailed to me
strike me as worth
recommending. I
recommend this book
highly. I myself was
also secretly
introduced to
Western cutlure
through literature
during the Cultural
Revolution when I
first read a hand
copied Chinese
translation of Jane
Eyre by Charlotte
Bronte. Dai Sijie
does an excellent
job showing this
experience. Anyone
who wants to
understand how
Western art and
literature
influences the
Chinese mindset
should read this
book."
--Anchee
Min author of
Red Azalea
and
Becoming
Madame Mao
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