Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

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

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.