Now that work in the office has tapered off abit and there's a short break in games at the World Cup before the Quarters, I can start on my reading again. Actually I am about a third through my latest tome already. Embarked on it 2 days ago.
After the runaway success of his first novel,
Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie returns with this, Mr Muo's Travelling Couch. An intriguing quest set in modern China where the protagonist Muo, a westernised Freud devotee, returns to the Motherland after spending years in France studying the famed PsychoAnalyst and his works. His mission? To free his childhood sweetheart, who is now a political prisoner, from the sadistic and corrupted clutches of Judge Di, the local magistrate. The price of the Communist bureaucrat's clemency? A virgin maiden.
And so Muo sets off across China, in search of a suitable girl. Along the way, he loses a tooth, his virginity and also his once steadfast belief in psychoanalytical insight. He discovers that perhaps even a chivalrous heart may just have enough room for more than one love. Its a journey that takes him from a lunatic asylum to a rural Panda Habitat to a Chengdu Mortuary.
All in Sijie's inimitable style, a unique narrative with the use of creative literary devices woven into a fine tapestry of delightful prose. A real joy to take it all in, snuggled on the sofa with a hot coffee and a packet of fags. And oh, some smooth BossaNova on the Bose too =)