Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress [Paperback]

'If you can only read one novel, choose this one, it's worth a hundred'. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'An enchanting tale from a pernicious period in Chinese history. Sijie has written a jewel of world literature.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'Wholly delightful, intelligent, funny and unexpected. A remarkable book, offering sheer delight.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Here is one of those rare novels, so captivatingly original, so absurdly funny, surprising and moving, that it crosses all boundaries. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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.

One of the ten titles in the Vintage East promotion.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Born in China in 1954, Dai Sijie is a filmmaker who was himself 're-educated' between 1971 and 1974, and left China in 1984 for France, where he has lived and worked ever since. This, his first novel, was an overnight sensation when it appeared in France in 2000, became an immediate bestseller and won five prizes. Rights to the novel have been sold in twenty-five countries.

The village headman, a man of about fifty, sat cross-legged in in the centre of the room, close to the coals burning in a hearth that was hollowed out of the floor; he was inspecting my violin. Among the possessions brought to this mountain village by the two 'city youths' - which was how they saw Luo and me - it was the sole item that exuded an air of foreignness, of civilisation, and therefore aroused suspicion.
One of the peasants came forward with an oil lamp to facilitate identification of the strange object. The headman held the violin upright and peered into the black interior of the body, like an officious customs officer searching for drugs. I noticed three blood spots in his left eye, one large and two small, all the same shade of bright red.
Raising the violin to eye level, he shook it, as though convinced something would drop out of the sound-holes. His investigation was so enthusiastic I was afraid the strings would break.
Just about everyone in the village had come to the house on stilts way up on the mountain to witness the arrival of the city youths. Men, women and children swarmed inside the cramped room, clung to the windows, jostled each other by the door. When nothing fell out of my violin, the headman held his nose over the sound-holes and sniffed long and hard. Several long, bristly hairs protruding from his left nostril vibrated gently.
Still no clues.
He ran his calloused fingertips over one string, then another . . . The strange resonance froze the crowd, as if the sound had won some sort of respect.
'It's a toy,' said the headman solemnly.
This verdict left us speechless. Luo and I exchanged furtive, anxious glances. Things were not looking good.
One peasant took the 'toy' from the headman's hands, drummed with his fists on its back, then passed it to the next man. For a while my violin circulated through the crowd and we - two frail, skinny, exhausted and risible city youths - were ignored. We had been tramping across the mountains all day, and our clothes, faces and hair were streaked with mud. We looked like pathetic little reactionary soldiers from a propaganda film after their capture by a horde of Communist farm workers.
'A stupid toy,' a woman commented hoarsely.
'No,' the village headman corrected her, 'a bourgeois toy.'
I felt chilled to the bone despite the fire blazing in the centre of the room.
'A toy from the city,' the headman continued, 'go on, burn it!'
His command galvanised the crowd. Everyone started talking at once, shouting and reaching out to grab the toy for the privilege of throwing it on the coals.
'Comrade, it's a musical instrument,' Luo said as casually as he could, 'and my friend here's a fine musician. Truly.'
The headman called for the violin and looked it over once more. Then he held it out to me.
'Forgive me, comrade,' I said, embarrassed, 'but I'm not that good.'
I saw Luo giving me a surreptitious wink. Puzzled, I took my violin and set about tuning it.
'What you are about to hear, comrade, is a Mozart sonata,' Luo announced, as coolly as before.
I was dumbfounded. Had he gone mad? All music by Mozart or indeed by any other Western composer had been banned years ago. In my sodden shoes my feet turned to ice. I shivered as the cold tightened its grip on me.
'What's a sonata?' the headman asked warily.
'I don't know,' I faltered. 'It's Western.'
'Is it a song?'
'More or less,' I replied evasively.
At that instant the glint of the vigilant Communist reappeared in the headman's eyes, and his voice turned hostile.
'What's the name of this song of yours?'
'Well, it's like a song, but actually it's a sonata.'
'I'm asking you what it's called!' he snapped, fixing me with his gaze.
Again I was alarmed by the three spots of blood in his left eye.
'Mozart. . .' I muttered.
'Mozart what?'
'Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao,' Luo broke in.
The audacity! But it worked: as if he had heard something miraculous, the headman's menacing look softened. He crinkled up his eyes in a wide, beatific smile.
'Mozart thinks of Mao all the time,' he said.
'Indeed, all the time,' agreed Luo.
As soon as I had tightened my bow there was a burst of applause, but I was still nervous. However, as I ran my swollen fingers over the strings, Mozart's phrases came flooding back to me like so many faithful friends. The peasants' faces, so grim a moment before, softened under the influence of Mozart's limpid music like parched earth under a shower, and then, in the dancing light of the oil lamp, they blurred into one.
I played for some time. Luo lit a cigarette and smoked quietly, like a man.
This was our first taste of re-education. Luo was eighteen years old, I was seventeen.