A gigantic Impressionist mural painted in words. This novel is presented as a dictionary. Each word is explained in a story (sweet, funny, tragic, disturbing…), many of them several pages long. Each story reveals just a little more about one of the village’s central figures. Each character is another facet in the overall character of the village of Maqiao (ma-CHI-ow). A work of brilliant little glimpses, this one adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. Han was a young man during the Cultural Revolution, when he was sent to Maqiao (a mountain village in southern China) to learn from the peasants. He did. He kept notes on how language was different for the rural villages than for the urbanites he was used to. That, and decades of reflection, resulted in this book. A Dictionary of Maqiao is something of a coming-of-age tale, something of an old man’s lament for the loss of innocence, something of a search for the Chinese soul and something of an investigation of how all reality is constructed by our perceptions. Perhaps it is that the distant time and place invoke a feeling of the exotic, perhaps it is that each character in the ensemble cast is a compelling study of humanity or perhaps the dictionary format just appeals to the part of me that loves non-fiction. Whatever the reason, I could not stop reading this book! I recommend it for anyone interested in Chinese culture or in Magical Realism.
24 August 2010
A Review: A Dictionary of Maqiao – Han Shaogong
5 / 5 Stars
A gigantic Impressionist mural painted in words. This novel is presented as a dictionary. Each word is explained in a story (sweet, funny, tragic, disturbing…), many of them several pages long. Each story reveals just a little more about one of the village’s central figures. Each character is another facet in the overall character of the village of Maqiao (ma-CHI-ow). A work of brilliant little glimpses, this one adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. Han was a young man during the Cultural Revolution, when he was sent to Maqiao (a mountain village in southern China) to learn from the peasants. He did. He kept notes on how language was different for the rural villages than for the urbanites he was used to. That, and decades of reflection, resulted in this book. A Dictionary of Maqiao is something of a coming-of-age tale, something of an old man’s lament for the loss of innocence, something of a search for the Chinese soul and something of an investigation of how all reality is constructed by our perceptions. Perhaps it is that the distant time and place invoke a feeling of the exotic, perhaps it is that each character in the ensemble cast is a compelling study of humanity or perhaps the dictionary format just appeals to the part of me that loves non-fiction. Whatever the reason, I could not stop reading this book! I recommend it for anyone interested in Chinese culture or in Magical Realism.
A gigantic Impressionist mural painted in words. This novel is presented as a dictionary. Each word is explained in a story (sweet, funny, tragic, disturbing…), many of them several pages long. Each story reveals just a little more about one of the village’s central figures. Each character is another facet in the overall character of the village of Maqiao (ma-CHI-ow). A work of brilliant little glimpses, this one adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. Han was a young man during the Cultural Revolution, when he was sent to Maqiao (a mountain village in southern China) to learn from the peasants. He did. He kept notes on how language was different for the rural villages than for the urbanites he was used to. That, and decades of reflection, resulted in this book. A Dictionary of Maqiao is something of a coming-of-age tale, something of an old man’s lament for the loss of innocence, something of a search for the Chinese soul and something of an investigation of how all reality is constructed by our perceptions. Perhaps it is that the distant time and place invoke a feeling of the exotic, perhaps it is that each character in the ensemble cast is a compelling study of humanity or perhaps the dictionary format just appeals to the part of me that loves non-fiction. Whatever the reason, I could not stop reading this book! I recommend it for anyone interested in Chinese culture or in Magical Realism.
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