Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by:
Sijie Dai (author)
Ina Rilke (author)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous...
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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780385722209 (0385722206)
ASIN: 385722206
Publish date: October 29th 2002
Publisher: Anchor
Pages no: 184
Edition language: English
This was an interesting story with an unusual setting – China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the 1970s – following two teenaged boys who are being “re-educated” in the country for the crime of being part of the bourgeoisie, as part of the Down to the Countryside Movement. In a political and soc...
2 1/2 starsI liked a lot about this book, and the main character, and it's premise of reading forbidden western books in communist China, but I was filled with dismay by the approach the author took to the abortion. I understand that in communist China, the Little Seamstress would have felt that she...
Good for cultural understanding, nothing for feminism in here.
This is a coming of age story set in a remote set of villages during the Cultural Revolution. The tone is whimsical and humourous. Where it looks at the oppression of the cultural revolution it looks at the small oppressions and not the big things.It is first and foremost a book on the liberating ...
Sometimes a story has such an unsatisfying ending that I would rather have not read it at all. Of course, there were times when the journey was worth it (eg. abandoned fanfic WIPs), but the denouement of Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress left me highly annoyed. I have questions that will neve...
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