{"product_id":"books-a-dictionary-of-maqiao-by-han-shaogong","title":"A Dictionary of Maqiao","description":"One of the most-talked about works of fiction to emerge from China in recent years, this novel about an urban youth displaced to a small village in rural China during the Cultural Revolution is a fictionalized portrait of the author's own experience as a young man. Han Shaogong was one of millions of students relocated from cities and towns to live and work alongside peasant farmers in an effort to create a classless society. Translated into English for the first time, Han's novel is an exciting experiment in form--structured as a dictionary of the Maqiao dialect--through which he seeks to understand and translate the local life and customs of his strange new home. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHan encounters an upside-down world among the people of Maqiao: a con man dupes his neighbors into thinking that he has found the fountain of youth by convincing them that his father is in fact his son; to be scientific is to be lazy; time and relationships are understood using the language of food and its preparation; and to die young is considered sweet, while the aged reckon their lives to be cheap. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs entries build one upon another, Han meditates on the ability of a \u003ci\u003ewaidi ren\u003c\/i\u003e (outsider) to represent the ways of life of another community. In this light, the Communist effort to control the language and history of a people whose words and past are bound together in ineluctably local ways emerges as an often comical, sometimes tragic exercise in miscommunication.","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53509534253329,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780385339353.jpg?v=1778162715","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/books-a-dictionary-of-maqiao-by-han-shaogong","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}