num_pages: 172
description: Here is one of those rare novels, so captivatingly original, so absurdly funny, surprising and moving, that it crosses all boundaries. In 1971 Mao's campaign against the intellectuals is at its height. Our narrator and his best friend, Luo, distinctly unintellectual but guilty of being the sons of doctors, have been sent to a remote mountain village to be 'reeducated'. The kind of education that takes place among the peasants of Phoenix Mountain involves carting buckets of excrement up and down precipitous, foggy paths, but the two seventeen-year-olds have a violin and their sense of humour to keep them going. Further distraction is provided by the attractive daughter of the local tailor, possessor of a particularly fine pair of feet. Their true re-education starts, however, when they discover a comrade's hidden stash of classics of great nineteenth-century Western literature - Balzac, Dickens, Dumas, Tolstoy and others, in Chinese translation. They need all their ingenuity to get their hands on the forbidden books, but when they do their lives are turned upside down. And not only their lives: after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, the Little Seamstress will never be the same again. Without betraying the truth of what happened, Dai Sijie transforms the bleak events of China's Cultural Revolution into an enchanting and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit and the magical power of great storytelling.
language: English
title: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
titlecomplete: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
genres: Asia, Historical, Historical Fiction, Novels, Asian Literature, Literature, Classics, China, Fiction, Books About Books
ratings_count: 62834
places: China
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
category: Shortlist, awardedAt: 1420099200000
name: Premio letterario Giuseppe Acerbi, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Prix des libraires du Québec
category: Lauréats hors Québec, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Prix Relay du Roman d'Evasion, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Scott Moncrieff Prize
category: Ina Rilke, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Premi Llibreter de narrativa, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Random House (Vintage)