China dream : a novel / Ma Jian ; translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew.
Material type:
TextLanguage: English Original language: Chinese Publisher: Berkeley, California ; Counterpoint, 2019Copyright date: ©2018Edition: First Counterpoint hardcover editionDescription: 182 pages ; 21 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781640092402
- 1640092404
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | Fiction | Ma, Jian | Available | 33111009150935 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Blending fact and fiction, this darkly comic fable "may be the purest distillation yet of Mr. Ma's talent for probing the country's darkest corners and exposing what he regards as the Communist Party's moral failings" (Mike Ives, The New York Times ).
Called "Red Guards meet Kurt Vonnegut . . . powerful!" by Margaret Atwood on Twitter, China Dream is an unflinching satire of totalitarianism. Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, is feeling pleased with himself. He has an impressive office, three properties, and multiple mistresses who text him day and night. After decades of loyal service, he has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with replacing people's private dreams with President Xi Jinping's great China Dream of national rejuvenation. But just as he is about to present his plan for a mass golden wedding anniversary celebration, his sanity begins to unravel. Suddenly plagued by flashbacks of the Cultural Revolution, Ma Daode's nightmare visions from the past threaten to destroy his dream of a glorious future.
Exposing the damage inflicted on a nation's soul when authoritarian regimes, driven by an insatiable hunger for power, seek to erase memory, rewrite history, and falsify the truth, China Dream is a dystopian vision of repression, violence, and state-imposed amnesia that is set not in the future, but in China today.
Translated from the Chinese. "First published in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus in 2018."
Befuddled by spring dreams -- Sharing the same bed, dreaming different dreams -- Dreams evaporate, wealth trickles away -- Dreaming your life away in a drunken haze -- Life floats by like a dream -- Beguiled by empty pipe dreams -- The dream of the red tower.
"Ma Daode is feeling pleased with himself. He has just been appointed Director of the China Dream Bureau, tasked with overwriting people's private dreams with President Xi's great China Dream of national rejuvenation. He has an impressive office, three properties and a bevy of mistresses texting him night and day. But just as Ma Daode is putting the finishing touches to his plan for a mass golden wedding anniversary celebration, things take an uneasy turn. Suddenly plagued by flashbacks of the Cultural Revolution, Ma Daode's nightmares from the past threaten to undo his dream of a glorious future"-- Provided by publisher.