Saturday, December 7, 2013
Harsh and hopeful
Title: The Dark Road
By: Ma Jian
The Dark Road lives up to its name -- it explores the dark side of the one-child policy in China. Ma Jian, who now lives in London, returned to his native China to research this subject. He describes the efforts of ordinary families to avoid detection and bear extra children without state permission, and the often harrowing results when they are caught. By turns humorous and horrifying, harsh and hopeful, the journey takes us from village to houseboat to the hilltop town of Heaven, where computers are recycled in a worrisome manner. In one of my favorite lines, the main female character, Meili, imagines her future as an independent, modern woman:
"She will learn how to type and use a computer, then she’ll enter the complex world of circuit boards where you can find out anything you want and dismantle the entire universe into its constituent parts."
View similarly tagged posts: fiction
Posted on Dec. 7, 2013 at midnight
