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Boy In The Twilight: Stories Of The Hidden China (2014)

by Yu Hua(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0307379361 (ISBN13: 9780307379368)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Pantheon

review 1: A disturbing look at the Chinese society and the people who are at the grassroots, the middle class, the hawkers and the complex relationships between them. The stories are wonderfully woven yet the outcomes are never good in the traditional sense, and more often than not devastating for the lead character. Yu Hua shows us that there are no bright and dark patches, only gray; that happiness has its roots steeped in despair.
review 2: I have given this five stars because it is so brilliantly written and translated, as I have come to expect from Yu Hua. What a storyteller, I couldn't put the book down! It was gripping and at the same time somewhat depressing. Funny, yet so so dark. The stories contain all the interesting day to day context of modern China, but sp... moreiralled me into self questioning - is human nature really so different where I come from? No and yes and no. There is something so banal about human cruelty everywhere. Yet Yu Hua paints his characters without judgement. He lets us stand in unappealing shoes, and bear witness to undecorated humanity, its failure, its warmth, its messiness. We are never given the comfort of neat resolutions, or spoon-fed any deeper meaning to what bluntly is. That made the ending of every story feel uncomfortable, sometimes painfully so. I liked that, it felt life-like. less

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