From the iconic Chinese author of Raise The Red Lantern and winner of the Man Asia literary prize 2009.
Disgraced Secretary Ku has been banished from the Party - it has been officially proved he does not have a fish-shaped birthmark on his bottom and is therefore not the son of a revolutionary martyr, but the issue of a river pirate and a prostitute. Mocked by the citizens of Milltown, Secretary Ku leaves the shore for a new life among the boat people on a fleet of industrial barges. Refusing to renounce his high status, he maintains a distance - with Dongliang, his teenage son - from the gossipy lowlifes who surround him.
One day a feral little girl, Huixian, arrives looking for her mother, who has jumped to her death in the river. The boat people, and especially Dongliang, take her to their hearts. But Huixian sows conflict wherever she goes, and soon Dongliang is in the grip of an obsession for her. He takes on Life, Fate and the Party in the only way he knows . . .
From the iconic Chinese author of Raise The Red Lantern and winner of the Man Asia literary prize 2009.
Disgraced Secretary Ku has been banished from the Party - it has been officially proved he does not have a fish-shaped birthmark on his bottom and is therefore not the son of a revolutionary martyr, but the issue of a river pirate and a prostitute. Mocked by the citizens of Milltown, Secretary Ku leaves the shore for a new life among the boat people on a fleet of industrial barges. Refusing to renounce his high status, he maintains a distance - with Dongliang, his teenage son - from the gossipy lowlifes who surround him.
One day a feral little girl, Huixian, arrives looking for her mother, who has jumped to her death in the river. The boat people, and especially Dongliang, take her to their hearts. But Huixian sows conflict wherever she goes, and soon Dongliang is in the grip of an obsession for her. He takes on Life, Fate and the Party in the only way he knows . . .
From the iconic Chinese author of Raise The Red Lantern and winner of the Man Asia literary prize 2009.
Born in 1963 in Suzhou and now living in Beijing with his family,
Su Tong is one of China's most celebrated bestselling authors,
shooting to international fame in 1993 when Zhang Yimou's film of
his novella Raise the Red Lantern was nominated for an Oscar. His
first short story collection, Madwoman on the Bridge was published
by Black Swan in 2008.
Translator Howard Goldblatt is Research Professor at the University
of Notre Dame. He is the recipient of two translation fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Arts and has been awarded the
Translation of the Year Prize from the American Literary
Translators Association and the Man Asian Literary Prize.
Su Tong writes beautiful, dangerous prose
*Meg Wolitzer*
What I admire most is Su Tong's style...His strokes are restrained
but merciless. He is a true literary talent
*Anchee Min*
Powerful and elegant ...the world he so vividly depicts has the
timelessness of a classical Chinese court painting
*Independent*
There is something soothing and insistent about the sound and feel
of Su Tong's writing.Chinese customs and characters make the mood
strange and different....Language, its feel and construction, flows
like the river into the reader's imagination... [More] twists,
turns and tragedies hold the reader's attention right to the end.
The writing is superb, the word pictures of the river and its
people memorable. And Yes, it could make great cinema
*Sunday Express*
The major achievement of this novel is Su Tong's decision to forgo
his strength as a prose stylist and settle for a familiar story
told in a familiar language. Despite the tendency of the younger
generation to dismiss the cultural revolution as a bygone era, this
recent past, with its cruelties and absurdities, still lives in the
nation's memory.
At his best, Su Tong is able to catch the tragedy and comedy of
that time, using a highly political language: when the birthmark on
Ku Wenxue's bottom disqualifies him as the martyr's son, the whole
town goes through a craze of examining one another's bottoms in the
toilets of municipal baths, while Dongliang, our private and
sensitive narrator, reports, "I tightened my belt and heightened my
vigilance," - a line that playfully combines two slogans from Mao's
era.
Dialogues filled with political clichés of the time are the
highlight of the novel. In an extremely poignant exchange - both
tragic and absurd - towards the end of the novel, the narrator, in
order to steal the martyr's memorial stone, has a long argument
with the town's idiot, who has for decades considered himself to be
the real son of the martyr.
*Guardian*
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