by DAI SIJIE

1971: Mao’s Cultural Revolution is at its peak. Two sons of doctors sent to ‘re-education’ camps, forced to carry buckets of excrement up and down mountain paths, have only their sense of humour to keep them going, although the attractive daughter of the local tailor also helps to distract them from the task at hand.

The boys’ true re-education starts, however, when they discover a hidden suitcase packed with the great Western novels of the nineteenth century. Their lives are transformed. And not only their lives: after listening to the stories of Balzac, the little seamstress will never be the same again.

” A woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price.”

– Balzac

I am not familiar with Mao’s Cultural Revolution and know very little about Chinese History so I am not going to touch on that matter.

Instead I find it really touching when the two friends found books and their thirst for it. I guess we can find the importance of things when its not available to us anymore, in this case books. It’s kinda sad really that in our era, books and other type of knowledge is just within our grasp and yet we take it for granted.

This book is very easy to read and yet full of life.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Blog365, Book Challenge, Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.