This book tells the story of a man who wants to rise to prominence in the communist party during the period of the Cultural Revolution in China, the mid-1960’s. He’s just been discharged from the army and returns to his rural village, where he meets a young woman that he’s instantly attracted to, and finds that she has similarly fiery views about the principles of Mao. The trouble is, they’re both already married, he to the daughter of the Party Secretary, and she, to the son of the former mayor. They begin having an affair that if discovered would be the doom of them both. Another problem is that in trying to stir up the peasants to take actions like destroy an old monument in the village, they naturally earn the anger of the powers that be, and so a power struggle ensues.

The strength of the novel lies in deftly showing just how much of this young man’s behavior is in reality selfishly motivated. It’s not really about the ideals of collectivism, it’s about an individual trying to attain power. We see him trying to use the rhetoric in Mao’s texts as a weapon against those in power, establishing purity tests and secretly gathering evidence to privately denounce people – not because they’re evil or hold capitalist views, but because they’re in his way. He uses the power of peer pressure to get people on his side, promising personal favors should he gain power. This is the same kind of behavior that played out in the Soviet Union’s experiment with communism, and I found it a searing indictment, in its quiet way. It was a little surprising to me that this wasn’t among his banned books in China. I also appreciated its implicit criticism of the disastrous Cultural Revolution.

One of the weaknesses of the novel is its length, which isn’t justified by the quality of the prose. It’s 413 dense pages, and should have been 100-200 pages shorter. Too often lengthy revolutionary statements are included, I supposed to juxtapose these with the guy’s behavior and make a point, but it got to be too much. I have to say also, that Yan’s writing about sex was weak to say the least. Early on he goes at length about the young woman’s breasts in childish ways (“I knew this was where breast milk came out, something sweet and moist, capable of intoxicating a man”), and almost every time he returned to the topic, it made me cringe a bit. In making the protagonist have occasional erectile issues which are often solved by listening to soaring revolutionary music I think he’s saying that guy in insecure as a man, and needs the revolutionary cause with all its rhetoric to feel larger than himself. He’s the kind of personality that could have adapted itself to any other cause and rhetoric, even if he seems a true believer in this one. I just felt that this was rather clumsily handled and rather overdone.

Overall, worth reading if you’re interested in this period of Chinese history, and/or subversive texts. It won’t be for everyone though. ( )