I am happy to have found Chronicles of a Blood Merchant at a Gramedia store here in Bali, the author of which, Yu Hua, became one of my all-time favorite writers after reading his novel, Brothers, earlier this year.
Chronicles, which is well less than half the length of Brothers, presents a compelling picture of Maoist China that is both severe for the hardships depicted and darkly hilarious in its narrative of common people facing the pressures of every day life. I am reminded somewhat of Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat and Sweet Thursday, as well as V.S. Naipaul's Miguel Street. What is tangible in Hua's writing is his love for the every day man and woman of the lower class, his intimate acquaintance with the essential forces that make people tick, sometimes honorable, sometimes deplorable, always real.
As with Brothers, I am reading this novel in Indonesian with the thought that the Asian character in general is probably more faithfully presented in an Asian language. In the case of Chronicles, however, this does present in challenge, in that the translator, Augustinus Wibowo, a native Indonesian, has sought to communicate the colloquial feel of Hua's story through the use of Indonesian language constructions that are outside the dynamics of formal Indonesian (rather in the way that the language used by Mark Twain is often outside grammatical and linguistic norms in English). In short, I'm having to look up a lot of words! But of course the good news in that is that I am learning and may well end up recognizing some of these words when they are spoken in the future by the local folks I talk to.
A number of Hua's novels, I have found, are available in English from Amazon, and so that is good news, too--as I will no doubt want to continue with Hua's novels after finishing this one.
Chronicles, which is well less than half the length of Brothers, presents a compelling picture of Maoist China that is both severe for the hardships depicted and darkly hilarious in its narrative of common people facing the pressures of every day life. I am reminded somewhat of Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat and Sweet Thursday, as well as V.S. Naipaul's Miguel Street. What is tangible in Hua's writing is his love for the every day man and woman of the lower class, his intimate acquaintance with the essential forces that make people tick, sometimes honorable, sometimes deplorable, always real.
As with Brothers, I am reading this novel in Indonesian with the thought that the Asian character in general is probably more faithfully presented in an Asian language. In the case of Chronicles, however, this does present in challenge, in that the translator, Augustinus Wibowo, a native Indonesian, has sought to communicate the colloquial feel of Hua's story through the use of Indonesian language constructions that are outside the dynamics of formal Indonesian (rather in the way that the language used by Mark Twain is often outside grammatical and linguistic norms in English). In short, I'm having to look up a lot of words! But of course the good news in that is that I am learning and may well end up recognizing some of these words when they are spoken in the future by the local folks I talk to.
A number of Hua's novels, I have found, are available in English from Amazon, and so that is good news, too--as I will no doubt want to continue with Hua's novels after finishing this one.
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