A Dictionary of Maqiao

A Dictionary of Maqiao

From the daring imagination of one of Chinaâ€™s greatest living novelists comes a work of startling power and originalityâ€“the story of a young man â€œdisplacedâ€ to a small village in rural China during the 1960s. Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold inventionâ€“and a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution.
Entries trace the wisdom and absurdities of Maqiao: the petty squabbles, family grudges, poverty, infidelities, fantasies, lunatics, bullies, superstitions, and especially the odd logic in their use of languageâ€“where the word for â€œbeginningâ€ is the same as the word for â€œendâ€; â€œlittle big brotherâ€ means older sister; to be â€œscientificâ€ means to be lazy; and â€œstreetsicknessâ€ is a disease afflicting villagers visiting urban areas. Filled with colorful charactersâ€“from a weeping ox to a man so poisonous that snakes die when they bite himâ€“A Dictionary of Maqiao is both an important work of Chinese literature and a probing inquiry into the extraordinary power of language.

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