HALF OF MAN IS WOMAN

by Zhang Xianliang ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 1988

Breakthrough autobiographical novel from Zhang, a former poet exiled to labor reform camp for ""rightist"" tendencies during the Cultural Revolution, who became a symbol of political openness in China when his explicitly sexual novel was first published there (to some scandal) in 1985. It is the spring of 1966; Zhang Yonglin, a poet suffering at once political exile, impotence, and writer's block, sees a young woman bathing nude one day at a spring outside his prison camp: it is Huang Xiangjiu, twice-divorced, a political prisoner charged with the ""crime"" of ""male-female relations."" Initially, she shuns Zhang, but eight years later, when both have been freed, they meet again at a state farm and marry. As the book's title suggests, Huang gradually restores Zhang's creativity and manhood--for Zhang, the marriage is an act of political liberation meant to ""cut away [the] past."" But the story is mainly about his (and by extension China's) spiritual agony, conveyed in psychological light both harsh and surreal. Zhang's experience of the difference between prison and freedom, dream and reality, conveys harrowing truths about his own and his country's turmoil; at one point, nearing madness, he is visited by a talking horse, the voice of Othello, and the ghost of Marx--all of whom try futilely to interpret the absurd sufferings of this archetypal Chinese victim and saint. Replete with Biblical allusions, western philosophy, American history (including My Lai), and the history of Chinese literature, this transcends the somewhat provincial bounds of recent Chinese fiction. Zhang successfully joins Kundera, Orwell, and others who have given global import to local political calamity. Though imperfect and raw, his is a powerful, demanding story, and a significant contribution to world political literature.

Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION