David Kherdian

Considered a classic Chinese novel of the 16th century. It is the story of a Buddhist monk, Tang Zang, who travels to India, by order of the Emperor, to worship the Buddha and bring back sacred texts. Tang Zang has four traveling companions, all fallen individuals who, by making this trip, are atoning for a sin and hoping for a better life (form) in the next life. From the critical reviews that I have read, the point of this novel is the travel toward enlightenment. The Chinese consider this an epic folktale. This book was 404 pages in length. When I had completed it, I discovered it was an abridged edition. Nowhere on the book did it say this was the case. The original version is 872 pages. I will not be rereading.… (meer)

"In this fictionalized autobiography of his mother, Kherdian tells of a little girl's joy in the food and family life in her close Turkish Armenian community, then the horrors and suffering that began when thousands of Armenians are rounded up and marched toward the desert where they were sure to die. A cholera epidemic took Veran's sisters and brothers en route; her mother gave up life after the death of the sons whom she had favored; her father was killed shortly afterward; and Veran spent her growing-up years with a succession of kind and unkind aunts, in an orphanage, and in hospitals after a Greek attack on her Turkish city blew off a chunk of her leg. Veran's early dreams of getting back to her grandmother were replaced by dreams of America, and as the book ends she is 15 and on her way--via a family-arranged marriage to the author's father, whom she has not yet seen. Kherdian well captures the voice of a basically optimistic and very likable young girl, and whether the scene is a garden picnic or mass death and panic at the harbor where everyone is fleeing the Turks, it is seen through her eyes and reported as if from vivid memory." www.kirkusreviews.com… (meer)