The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang
9/2022 · Columbia University Press
5,0star
1 recenziareport
E‑kniha
180
Počet strán
family_home
Vhodné
info
reportHodnotenia a recenzie nie sú overené Ďalšie informácie
Táto e‑kniha
The Backstreets is an astonishing novel by a preeminent contemporary Uyghur author who was disappeared by the Chinese state. It follows an unnamed Uyghur man who comes to the impenetrable Chinese capital of Xinjiang after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds only cold stares and rejection. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of numbers and odors, lust and loathing, memories and madness.
Perhat Tursun’s novel is a work of untrammeled literary creativity. His evocative prose recalls a vast array of canonical world writers—contemporary Chinese authors such as Mo Yan; the modernist images and rhythms of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Kafka; the serious yet absurdist dissection of the logic of racism in Ellison’s Invisible Man—while drawing deeply on Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics and combining all these disparate influences into a style that is distinctly Perhat Tursun’s own. The Backstreets is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work.
Perhat Tursun’s novel is a work of untrammeled literary creativity. His evocative prose recalls a vast array of canonical world writers—contemporary Chinese authors such as Mo Yan; the modernist images and rhythms of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Kafka; the serious yet absurdist dissection of the logic of racism in Ellison’s Invisible Man—while drawing deeply on Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics and combining all these disparate influences into a style that is distinctly Perhat Tursun’s own. The Backstreets is a stark fable about urban isolation and social violence, dehumanization and the racialization of ethnicity. Yet its protagonist’s vivid recollections of maternal tenderness and first love reveal how memory and imagination offer profound forms of resilience. A translator’s introduction situates the novel in the political atmosphere that led to the disappearance of both the author and his work.
Hodnotenia a recenzie
5,0
1 recenzia
O autorovi
Perhat Tursun is a leading Uyghur writer, poet, and social critic from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He has published many short stories and poems as well as three novels, including the controversial 1999 novel The Art of Suicide, decried as anti-Islamic. In 2018, he was detained by the Chinese authorities and was reportedly given a sixteen-year prison sentence.
Darren Byler is assistant professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University and author of Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City (2022). His anonymous cotranslator, who disappeared in 2017, is presumed to be in the reeducation camp system in northwest China.
Ohodnoťte túto elektronickú knihu
Povedzte nám svoj názor.
Informácie o dostupnosti
Smartfóny a tablety
Nainštalujte si aplikáciu Knihy Google Play pre Android a iPad/iPhone. Automaticky sa synchronizuje s vaším účtom a umožňuje čítať online aj offline, nech už ste kdekoľvek.
Laptopy a počítače
Audioknihy zakúpené v službe Google Play môžete počúvať prostredníctvom webového prehliadača v počítači.
Čítačky elektronických kníh a ďalšie zariadenia
Ak chcete tento obsah čítať v zariadeniach využívajúcich elektronický atrament, ako sú čítačky e‑kníh Kobo, musíte stiahnuť príslušný súbor a preniesť ho do svojho zariadenia. Pri prenose súborov do podporovaných čítačiek e‑kníh postupujte podľa podrobných pokynov v centre pomoci.
