Dan Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

What do you know about the Cultural Revolution? Is it said that "not a single event in human history seems to bear much resemblance to what went on during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution".

It begun in 1966 and a couple of years later the "Down to the Countryside movement" begun. Young "intellectuals" (actually recently graduated middle school students) were ordered to go to the countryside as a process of re-education.

This is the background, comprehensively (in a light way) described in the novel.

What else do we have? We have a little chinese seamstress and, the most important thing, we have Balzac telling her something.


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