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A Dictionary of Life
HOME > PAST ISSUE > REPORTS [Premium content] > Regional FocusAugust 2004
<i>A Dictionary of Maqiao</i> is a strange name for a novel. But this book, written by Chinese novelist Han Shaogong and translated into English by Julia Lovell, is interesting because of its unique structure and because of the stories it tells about an aspect of China that outsiders will never really penetrate - village life.
The novel is organized in the manner of a dictionary. Each of the dozens of entries begins with a word or a phrase used in the village Maqiao in Hunan, to which the author was sent as an Educated Youth in the Cultural Revolution in 1960s. The body of the novel is the explanations of the phrases. The stories, the characters, the sense of the village and its past, builds up definition by definition.
Language being what it is, a novel structured in this way is difficult to translate, ...
Language being what it is, a novel structured in this way is difficult to translate, ...
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