num_pages: 285
description: Poet Zhang Yonglin is sentenced to a labor camp he ironically describes as a haven amidst the hysteria of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. After he marries a woman he had seen eight years earlier the story becomes on one level an analogy between his temporary sexual impotence and the position of intellectuals. A year later he is ready to abandon his wife and escape from the camp. Cameo appearances by philosophic and literary figures (Marx and Meng-tz Othello and Song Ji) and discussing China and sex allow the incorporation of non-novelistic elements while indulging in gallows humor.
language: English
title: Half of Man Is Woman
publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc