A Dictionary of Maqiao

A Dictionary of Maqiao

Han Shaogong

Publisher: Dial PressFormat: Paperback

From the daring imagination of one of China's greatest living novelists comes a work of startling power and originality-the story of a young man “displaced” to a small village in rural China during the 1960s. Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, “A Dictionary of Maqiao” is a novel of bold invention-and a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution.Entries trace the wisdom and absurdities of Maqiao: the petty squabbles, family grudges, poverty, infidelities, fantasies, lunatics, bullies, superstitions, and especially the odd logic in their use of language-where the word for “beginning” is the same as the word for “end”; “little big brother” means older sister; to be “scientific” means to be lazy; and “streetsickness” is a disease afflicting villagers visiting urban areas. Filled with colorful characters-from a weeping ox to a man so poisonous that snakes die when they bite him-“A Dictionary of Maqiao” is both an important work of Chinese literature and a probing inquiry into the extraordinary power of language.

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