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Muyu, a seventeen-year-old from a small village, came to Beijing for his piece of the dream: money, love, a good life. But in the city, daily life for him and his friends?purveyors of fake IDs and counterfeit papers?is a precarious balance of struggle and guile. Surveying the neighborhood from the rooftop of the apartment they all share, the young men play cards, drink beer, and discuss their aspirations, hoping for the best but expecting little more than the comfort of each other's company. In these connected stories translated from Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen and Jeremy Tiang, Xu's characters observe as others like them?workers, students, drifters, and the just plain unlucky?get by the best ways they know how: by jogging excessively, herding pigeons, building cars from scraps, and holding their friends close through the miasma of so-called progress.… (meer)
A collection of 9 interlinked stories set in the suburbs of Beijing. Narrated by a single voice, a 17 years old boy from a small village in the deep province, the stories follow an almost continuous story of immigration to the big city and making your way into a city that is bigger than anyone can imagine. I am almost willing to call it a novel - I had read novels that were more loosely linked than these stories are.
Muyu, our narrator (whose name we do not get until almost the end), had dropped out of school due to what appears to be a mental illness and the only thing that makes his head not feel weak is running - and you can do a lot of running in a big city. He and his roommates and housemates post advertisements for false papers - needed in a country which is regulated. The stories are full of death and struggle but also of a lot of small things that hit hard - the parents of a sick child who consider paying the fine to have a second child... until they do not need to, the father leaving his family back home and still trying to control the family's life, the young men who come to the city and get beaten, both emotionally and physically, by the indifference of almost everyone they meet, the family losing a husband and a father who need to survive on almost nothing after that while the man who murdered their loved one can continue his own life, the 10 years old that is forced to beg, the pigeons who may be food for some people but are the life of others.
The stories are gritty and in some places hard to read - there is cruelty and gore but there is also friendship and humanity peaking from under the grittiness. And while there is some hope in some of the stories, the overall tone is depressing - the big city eats you alive even if you manage to get there (because internal immigration in China is not as easy as just deciding to move after all). ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
The original title in Latin letters is from the English translation's copyright page. The one in Chinese is from https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BE%9... - the collection described contains the same 9 stories: 《屋顶上》《轮子是圆的》《六耳猕猴》《成人礼》《看不见的城市》《狗叫了一天》《摩洛哥王子》《如果大雪封门》《兄弟》 ("On the Rooftop", "Wheels Turn", "Six-Eared Macaque", "Coming of Age", "Unseen Cities", "The Dog's Been Barking All Day", "Prince of Morocco", "If the Snowstorms seal the Door" and "Brother") although in a slightly different order.
Uitgevers redacteuren
Auteur van flaptekst/aanprijzing
Oorspronkelijke taal
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Muyu, a seventeen-year-old from a small village, came to Beijing for his piece of the dream: money, love, a good life. But in the city, daily life for him and his friends?purveyors of fake IDs and counterfeit papers?is a precarious balance of struggle and guile. Surveying the neighborhood from the rooftop of the apartment they all share, the young men play cards, drink beer, and discuss their aspirations, hoping for the best but expecting little more than the comfort of each other's company. In these connected stories translated from Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen and Jeremy Tiang, Xu's characters observe as others like them?workers, students, drifters, and the just plain unlucky?get by the best ways they know how: by jogging excessively, herding pigeons, building cars from scraps, and holding their friends close through the miasma of so-called progress.
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(3.5)
1
Muyu, our narrator (whose name we do not get until almost the end), had dropped out of school due to what appears to be a mental illness and the only thing that makes his head not feel weak is running - and you can do a lot of running in a big city. He and his roommates and housemates post advertisements for false papers - needed in a country which is regulated. The stories are full of death and struggle but also of a lot of small things that hit hard - the parents of a sick child who consider paying the fine to have a second child... until they do not need to, the father leaving his family back home and still trying to control the family's life, the young men who come to the city and get beaten, both emotionally and physically, by the indifference of almost everyone they meet, the family losing a husband and a father who need to survive on almost nothing after that while the man who murdered their loved one can continue his own life, the 10 years old that is forced to beg, the pigeons who may be food for some people but are the life of others.
The stories are gritty and in some places hard to read - there is cruelty and gore but there is also friendship and humanity peaking from under the grittiness. And while there is some hope in some of the stories, the overall tone is depressing - the big city eats you alive even if you manage to get there (because internal immigration in China is not as easy as just deciding to move after all). (