Blades of Grass: The Stories of Lao She (Fiction from Modern China)
The 14 stories and fragment of an autobiographical novel collected here are set in urban China in the 1930s and run the gamut from satire to tragedy. Writing during Mao's reign, Lao She (a pen name; his real name was Shu Qingchun) was at first championed by the regime and achieved international recognition with his best-known novel, Camel Xiangzi (or Rickshaw, as it was titled in its first English translation). In the 1960s, however, he fell out of favor, and he died at the hands of the Red Guards in 1966. His stories are not explicitly political, but rather focus on human relationships and particularly on clashes between generations. The writer mocks self-righteousness and self-absorption in "A Man Who Doesn't Lie," in which upstanding Mr. Zhou is offended at an invitation to join the Liar's Society, but makes excuses to his boss to get a day off. In "The Grand Opening," the narrator boasts about his hospital, which treats VD with expensive injections of tea. But the tales are not all humorous. The young opera lover in "Rabbit" is destroyed by ambition and another man's greed, and in "Attachment," a collector of calligraphy loses his sense of proportion as he acquires paintings. With his humor and light touch, even Lao She's meditations on the baseness of humanity are sympathetic and appealing. Lyell's translations occasionally employ Western idioms to jarring effect, but the writer's voice shines through in this funny, deft collection from an important 20th-century Chinese literary figure. Notes at the end of each story explain pronunciation and cultural details, and the translator's postscript includes detailed biographical information. (Oct.)Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.