Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel [Paperback]

Dai Sijie (Author), Ina Rilke (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: October 29, 2002

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale. (Sept. 17)Forecast: Sijie's debut was a best-seller and prize winner in France in 2000, and rights have been sold in 19 countries; it is also scheduled to be made into a film. Its charm translates admirably strong sales can be expected on this side of the Atlantic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This beautifully presented novella tracks the lives of two teens, childhood friends who have been sent to a small Chinese village for "re-education" during Mao's Cultural Revolution. Sons of doctors and dentists, their days are now spent muscling buckets of excrement up the mountainside and mining coal. But the boys-Luo and the unnamed narrator-receive a bit of a reprieve when the villagers discover their talents as storytellers; they are sent on monthly treks to town, tasked with watching a movie and relating it in detail on their return. It is here that they encounter the little seamstress of the title, whom Luo falls for instantly. When, through a series of comic and clever tricks and favors, the boys acquire a suitcase full of forbidden Western literature, Luo decides to "re-educate" the ignorant girl whom he hopes will become his intellectual match. That a bit of Balzac can have an aphrodisiac effect is a happy bonus. Ultimately, the book is a simple, lovely telling of a classic boy-meets-girl scenario with a folktale's smart, surprising bite at the finish. The story movingly captures Maoism's attempts to imprison one's mind and heart (with the threat of the same for one's body), the shock of the sudden cultural shift for "bourgeois" Chinese, and the sheer delight that books can offer a downtrodden spirit. Though these moments are fewer after the love story is introduced, teens will enjoy them at least as much as the comic and romantic strands.

Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (October 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385722206
• ISBN-13: 978-0385722209
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (266 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

124 of 132 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What a little gem! September 11, 2001

By MLPlayfair VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Aah, this is a real find. Here's a lovely story with haunting images that will stay with you. It's a story of oppression reminiscent of "Fahrenheit 451" but it also has some harrowing adventure. It is at once charming and startling as we are plunged into the horror of Mao's "re-education" plan for China. It's a love story, yes, but it's mostly about the love of words, the insatiable thirst for stories, entertainment, and escape of any kind, the enormous revolution your life can undertake when introduced to new ideas, old wisdom, and beautiful language. It's especially delightful for those of us who love Asian literature. This translation from the French is a bit awkward in places, but it still manages to transcend language barriers and relate the magic the author intended. Frankly, I was drawn to the book because the cover is so beautiful, and I love the small size. As a former designer of publications, I immediately appreciated the beauty of the package, including the truly lovely typeface. It's a complete experience. And nothing in the book is overdone. It's like dessert for the soul.

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A cultural revolution, in miniature January 24, 2003

By Zack Davisson HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" does exactly what this type of book should do. It offers us a brief window into a part of the world, and a style of life, of which we will never be able to encounter first hand. It allows to walk a few steps in the shoes of a different kind of citizen of life, and thus empathize with their experience. It also provides a moving allegory for the power of fiction, and lets us appreciate something that is so readily available to us, yet so rare for others. The escape of fiction allows for dreams, and is a powerful force.

Being almost ignorant of the Chinese cultural re-education system, this book was educational historically as well. I had known of it in theory, but not details such as the banning of all books other than those written by Mao, or the process behind re-education. I do want to learn more about this chapter in history, of which the world is still feeling the repercussions.

The book itself is gentle, with moving imagery and a quiet sense of humor. The characters in it do not rage against the political machine, but instead make do with what life has forced upon them. There is love, of course, because humans will love in the most desperate of circumstances. To highlight the playfulness of the book, my favorite scene is when the tailor, influenced by the hearing of Count of Monte Cristo, begins to dress the village in fanciful pirate clothes and nautical emblems.

Charming all the way through, and small enough to be a quick read.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More subtle than it seems April 26, 2002

By KoKo the Talking Ape VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Lovely book. Except for two brief shifts in narrative viewpoint, the story is told in a very simple, almost naive way. But that simplicity hides great richness.

The story is about the power of dreams, imagination, fables, and the dangers they bring. The Cultural Revolution had forced two teenagers, the narrator and his friend, to relocate to a tiny mountainside village. And though these two young men are hardly shining lamps of erudition and culture, they manage to excite the imagination of their neighbors. Their violin (poorly played) charms the headmaster into accepting them into the village. The headmaster becomes enthralled, almost hypnotized with a clock with a rooster on the face, and its hold over him helps the two boys cope with farmwork. When the headmaster discovers the two can retell movies skillfully, they are sent to the larger village down th mountain expressly to watch films and retell them when they return. These things help them endure the rigors of Mao's reeducation. The story creates for them a kind of tiny paradise.

When they find (steal) a chest full of forbidden western classics, they are ecstatic. The stories are themselves dangerous, in Mao's paranoid, anti-intellectual, anti-western culture, where everyone was an informer and the crimes were not defined. But the stories are also dangerous for their exploration of the passions, for their power to excite the imagination, for their sheer craft and knowledge of the human heart. The narrator's friend begins to use Balzac's stories to woo a lovely seamstress.

In the very briefest, most evocative possible way, Dai shows how the books bring hints of conflict and danger into this little village. The narrator finds he is jealous of his friend and the seamstress. More disturbingly, he finds he thinks of things as his and mine, where before he never thought to distinguish.

Contrary to another reviewer, I find the story doesn't patronize or belittle the seamstress at all. In fact, that is one of the key ironies of the book, that the boy had tried to win her heart, and then make her a sophisticate, with Balzac, and had in fact succeeded. But the stories are the very thing that drive her away to make her own life in the city. They freed her, in fact.

Contrary to a reviewer below, the story feels Chinese to me. It has that exuberant, slightly coarse humor and that feeling of localness, like everything is taking place in a minature landscape: mountain, fields, a town (the big one) that consists of two buildings.

Dai himself endured "re-education," and it must have been a horrific experience. That he can write such a sunny, yet subtle and resonant work about the period is another proof of the power of literature and the imagination.