Three-Legged Horse
In his first book to be translated into English, Taiwanese author Cheng Ch'ing-wen offers 12 moving tales about city and village, man and woman, child and parent. Like the "twisted apples" of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, another powerful book about small-town life, many of Ch'ing-wen's characters are subtly deformed by suffering, loneliness, or misunderstanding. "Three-Legged Horse" follows "White-Nosed Raccoon, " driven to become a Japanese informer after his own people relentlessly mock his birthmark. "He wanted this prison cell to contain the whole of society, " he concludes, while serving as a janitor for the police. Later, after his wife's death and the Japanese defeat, the guilt-stricken man begins a strange kind of penance, carving lame horses that "emanated pain and remorse. " In "The River Suite, " the "best boatman in Old Town" is commended twice for his bravery in saving drowning neighbors, yet never works up the courage to speak to the woman he loves. A tyrannical mother-in-law separates the protagonist of "Autumn Night" from her husband. The wife undertakes a heroic nighttime journey to visit him on his birthday, only to turn around once she arrives so she won't be missed. Rendered with quiet, Chekhovian simplicity, these are stories of a vanishing world--and yet they resonate with universal truths. --Mary Park Author(s): Cheng Ch'ing-wen. Binding Paperback. Publisher(s): Columbia University Press. Label: Columbia University Press.
| Fabricant: | Columbia University Press |
| Numéro de la pièce: | |
| Prix le plus bas (CAD): | 18,59 $ |
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