Imagine being able to read any book you want. Take Rolland's Jean-Christophe, or Balzac's Pere Goriot, or even Tolstoy's War and Peace. Hold on a second, we can. Read any book we like. OK, let's start again. Imagine not being able to read any book you like. Imagine life during the cultural revolution in China when all you were allowed to read was one little red number. Dai Sijie's excellent Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, is a testimony to love, loathing and literature. Especially to literature. The story of two young men banished to the countryside to undergo re-education at the hands of peasants, and their subsequent discovery of love and a cache of translated western literature, lights up the short 184 pages in a way that makes you appreciate both freedom and literature's ability to free the mind. A wonderful read and short to boot. Highly recommended.
Posted by Joe at March 1, 2004 11:39 PMWarm'd the cockles of m'soul, it did.
Reading it reminded me of the last lines from Solzhenitsyn's Freedom to breathe.
No matter that this is only a tiny garden, hemmed in by five-storey houses like cages in a zoo. I cease to hear the motorcycles backfiring, the radios whining, the burble of loudspeakers. As long as there is fresh air to breathe under an apple-tree after a shower, we may survive a little longer.
Posted by: martin at March 2, 2004 09:09 AM