The Four Books
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From the Franz Kafka Prize–winning author of Lenin’s Kiss, a “stupendous and unforgettable” novel of Mao’s China (The Times, London). In the ninety-ninth district of a re-education compound, freethinking artists and academics are detained to strengthen their loyalty to Communist ideologies. Here, the Musician and her lover, the Scholar, along with the Author and the Theologian, are subjected to grinding physical labor. They are also encouraged to inform on each other’s dissident behavior—for the prize of a chance at freedom. Their preadolescent supervisor, the Child, delights in reward systems and excessive punishments. But when agricultural and industrial production quotas are raised to an unattainable level, the ninety-ninth district dissolves into lawlessness. As inclement weather and famine set in, the people are abandoned by the regime and left alone to survive. Set inside a labor camp during Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Booklist calls The Four Books a “rich and complex novel,” from “China’s most heralded and censored modern writer” (The South China Morning Post).
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Great insight - delivered in a fable-like way - into a major chapter in China's history that I didn't know so much about. It seems to foreshadow the bigger environmental and social problems in the world today.
Seemingly Kafkaesque in its depiction of a Chinese reeducation labor camp, yet when you learn about the conditions during China's Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), you realize that the book is actually very close to reality. Blinded by a vision of communist ideals and a planned economy, Mao set out to restructure China's agriculture with unrealistic goals and poor decision making. Intellectualism was punished, scholars become peasants, production goals were lies and exaggerations, a reward systems encouraged cheating, and everyone was made to report on everyone else. All together this led to economic disaster, the great famine and a death count between 18 and 45 million. Quite brilliant, a good history lesson, and not as dry as you'd expect from an allegorical story. The novel falls in line with other Kafkaesque, allegorical and surreal tales like [b:The Woman in the Dunes 9998 The Woman in the Dunes Kōbō Abe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361254930l/9998.SY75.jpg 58336] or [b:The Queue 30186905 The Queue Basma Abdel Aziz https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1463240555l/30186905.SY75.jpg 24080947].
