Celebrated Chinese writer Ma Jian sets off on an extraordinary
journey around China in search of himself and his country.
Winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Award
Lots of Chinese women have given us their stories - now a young man writes about his disillusion with the Communist system and an extraordinary journey that he made around China in search of himself and his country.
Ma Jian was born in Qingdao, China in 1953. He is the author of Stick Out Your Tongue, which in 1987 led to the permanent banning of his books in China, Red Dust, winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award 2002, The Noodle Maker, Beijing Coma which narrated the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and The Dark Road.
"Enthralling... He depicts a land of extraordinary physical beauty and interest and his prose is always elegant. Read this book for its human truthfulness and for unforgettable moments" Daily Telegraph "Red Dust is a tour de force, a powerfully picaresque cross between the sort of travel book any Western author would give his eye-teeth to write, and a disturbing confession" Independent "It opens windows on landscapes small and vast, all still largely unobserved and unknown to Westerners" Observer "Honest, raw, insightful... The Chinese equivalent of On the Road" Time "[Ma's] powers of description make every page buzz with life... Someone who could rank among the great travel writers" New York Times Book Review
"Enthralling... He depicts a land of extraordinary physical beauty and interest and his prose is always elegant. Read this book for its human truthfulness and for unforgettable moments" Daily Telegraph "Red Dust is a tour de force, a powerfully picaresque cross between the sort of travel book any Western author would give his eye-teeth to write, and a disturbing confession" Independent "It opens windows on landscapes small and vast, all still largely unobserved and unknown to Westerners" Observer "Honest, raw, insightful... The Chinese equivalent of On the Road" Time "[Ma's] powers of description make every page buzz with life... Someone who could rank among the great travel writers" New York Times Book Review
In 1983, squirming under constant government scrutiny and mourning a failed marriage, writer and photographer Jian abandons his home in Beijing to journey to China's western border with little more than a change of clothes, two bars of soap, a notebook, a camera and Whitman's Leaves of Grass. It is the beginning of an arduous three-year voyage that takes him not only through little-traveled regions of China, Myanmar and Tibet, but through a careful examination of what it means to be a Buddhist, to live in post-Mao China and to exist in his own skin. A skilled storyteller, Jian narrates in prose that is spare and often beautiful his encounters with people who live in a region that "even today... is a place of banishment, populated by political prisoners, descendents of Turkic migrants, and the ghosts of buried cities." From the night he spends crammed under a bus seat next to a pile of dirty socks and clucking hens to his escape from Chinese militiamen who mistake him for a Burmese spy, Jian tells a powerful story that is no mere travelogue. Indeed, his journey exposes him to so many risks getting bitten by sheepdogs in the grasslands along the Yellow River, drinking foul lake water that knocks him unconscious that the sheer number of life-threatening incidents begins to dull their impact. Still, Jian offers a revealing, riveting portrait of a Chinese citizen who seeks truth and honesty in a society in which such a quest can be grounds for punishment. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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