I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China (Weatherhead Books on Asia) by Wen Zhu

I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China (Weatherhead Books on Asia)



Download I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China (Weatherhead Books on Asia)




I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China (Weatherhead Books on Asia) Wen Zhu
Language: English
Page: 256
Format: pdf
ISBN: 0231136943, 9780231510226
Publisher:

From Publishers Weekly

Written during the mid- to late-1990s, Wen's first work to be translated into English is a collection of bleak, absurdist tales chronicling the underside of China's capitalist miracle as experienced by young men whose lives exhibit none of the glittering promise of economic progress. In the title novella, a son haggles with prostitutes in an embarrassingly misguided attempt to entertain his visiting father. In "A Hospital Night," a young man is manipulated by his girlfriend into keeping watch over her sick and resentful father in a hospital staffed by brutish nurses. The workers in "Ah, Xiao Xie" try desperately to quit their jobs at an under-construction and over-budget "national showcase" power plant that is unable to produce power, but are prevented from doing so. Zhu Wen portrays the banal details of his settings with precision—it's no surprise that he has since transformed himself into an award-winning filmmaker (Seafood, 2001). Given the abiding sense of hopelessness, the book has its tedious moments, but it is saved by a narrative voice that is by turns low-key, flippant and neurotic, and highly readable as translated by Lovell. (Jan.)
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Review

Highly readable.

(Publishers Weekly )

Zhu Wen has a brilliant feel for detail in this colloquial, slangy translation.

(Wingate Packard Seattle Times )

Brilliant... Wonderful... I Love Dollars is a publication that's not to be missed.

(Bradley Winterton Taipei Times )

Splendidly translated by Julia Lovell... an absorbing portrait of the go-go years in China.

(Jonathan Spence London Review of Books )

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