An extremely random book that we salvaged from my grandma’s
shelves (together with other cheap but worthy newsagent tomes) once she was
moved to a home – I think this is possibly a collection published in this form
only in Italy, but the stories themselves should be available individually and
translated worldwide.
Having never really read any Chinese literature (Pearl S.
Buck doesn’t count, I suppose) this felt like as good an introduction to it as
any, coming from a Nobel laureate and all (although we live in the times of Bob
Dylan and the EU receiving Nobel prizes…). I’m normally not a big fan of short
stories, but so many of them are so tragically well-written that I was immediately
sold on this collection. I know some people might find it blasphemous, but I
really thought that Mo Yan shares plenty of stylistic and thematic similarities
with the Italian Fenoglio.
These stories of poverty, love, and small dramas are some of
the most moving I’ever read – I clearly thought about reading the whole of Mo
Yan’s bibliography after this, but the heap of unread books in my flat actually
takes precedence for the time being.
No comments:
Post a Comment