A compelling portrait of an unfamiliar place on the cusp of modernity: a promising new writer.
Debut fiction describing the bloodstained last days of Tibetan chieftains before the Chinese communists took over their lands in 1949.
The tale is set in the Tibetan borderlands during the first half of the 20th century. Now part of Sichuan, the region was then ruled by powerful chieftains who lived like medieval barons. The son of one of them, Chieftain Maiqi, narrates. Commonly perceived to be an idiot because he doesn’t talk much and often looks vacant-eyed, the unnamed narrator is anything but stupid—indeed, the device of having people constantly call him “idiot” ultimately grows strained. Recalling his pampered childhood with slaves in attendance, a Buddhist lama and family historian on call, he details a brutal, colorful world. Each chieftain has an executioner, numerous concubines, and a standing army. There are no cars or electricity, the medicine is traditional and the customs antique. But the years bring dire changes. Chieftain Maiqi becomes extremely rich and powerful when a Chinese official orders him to grow opium; envious of his profits, fellow chieftains steal seeds and plant their own lands entirely with red poppies, but they starve when a bad winter ensues. Only Chieftain Maiqi has planted grain, heeding the advice of his now-teenaged son and saving his people. Respected more as he grows older, the narrator also warns his father and elder brother that they are stalked by assassins bent on avenging the death of kin executed by the chieftain. As the outside world intrudes and the Red army takes over, he ruefully recalls the historian who once told him “history means learning about today and tomorrow from yesterday.” The author, himself an ethnic Tibetan who lives in Sichuan, eschews conventional chronology and epic sweep in favor of an episodic, lyric, and low-key narrative
A compelling portrait of an unfamiliar place on the cusp of modernity: a promising new writer.Pub Date: March 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-618-11964-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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