MCLC: Su Tong's Tatto (ad)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Su Tong's Tattoo (ad)
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Tattoo: Three Novellas
By Su Tong
Translated by Josh Stenberg
Merwin Asia (http://www.merwinasia.com/)

>From the author of Wives and Concubines (titled Raise the Red Lantern in
the film), Rice and many other major works of contemporary Chinese fiction
comes a new collection of novellas that ranges from mystery in swinging
prewar Shanghai to the violent gangs of the Cultural Revolution.

In The Gardener¹s Art, a family dispute ends in the disappearance of a
wealthy dentist. As his wife and children plunge into crisis and
suspicion, the clues of the case lead them into Shanghai¹s seamy side. A
brilliant evocation of a vanished pre-Communist time, in all its glamor
and squalor.

A Divorce Handbook is the bitterly funny tale of a man, unhappy in
marriage, who comes up against the inflexible attitudes of a traditional
society. One of the most perceptive works to chart China¹s shifting social
mores.

In Tattoo, a lame adolescent is marked by the death of his brother in gang
warfare. Overcoming his injuries through the practice of martial arts, he
seeks to revive the flagging fortunes of his gang, but must face treachery
and contempt at every turn.

This volume by Su Tong demonstrates his mastery of the whole sweep of
twentieth-century China.

Review

³The three novellas collected here, written in the 1990s, are well
selected and expertly translated. Su Tong¹s 1992 novels Rice and My Life
as Emperor already evidence the turn toward realism and portentous history
often noted in post-[Tiananmen] Massacre works by Yu Hua (author of To
Live) . . . The novellas here are sparer and not so showy, though they
could still be called urban Chinese period pieces. A mystery of this
collection, ŒThe Gardener¹s Art,¹ is set in 1930s Shanghai. The title
story, which closes the volume, dramatizes primitive violence and the
tattoos that served as Œcolors¹ for urban gangs of the 1970s just before
Mao¹s death. As always, Su Tong depicts bullying, vengeance, and cruelty,
but here he renders these acts deftly and without sensationalism. The
effect is not melodrama, but visions of pervasive ugliness, squalor, and
malodor. The mystery piece, about a missing husband, is really a vehicle
for exploring verbal harassment, snobbery, and paternal fecklessness in
the eternal Chinese family and the neighborhoods hiding it. That novella
continues the theme of the opening work, ŒA Divorce Handbook,¹ which
details the rage of a woman scorned, her ability to enlist her birth
family and China¹s mean streets to achieve violent retribution, and the
emptiness of her husband¹s dreams for a better life. The raw passions of
Chinese divorce emerge more quickly and adroitly than in Ha Jin¹s Waiting.
The tattoos in Su Tong¹s novella of that name evoke his fascination with
fetishes and obsessions, but now with the narrative economy of a master
storyteller who has a fine grasp of human psychology.²­­­­Jeffrey C.
Kinkley in World Literature Today
 

Table of Contents

Divorce Handbook
The Gardener¹s Art
Tattoo
 

Author biography

Su Tong burst onto the Chinese literary scene in the mid-eighties. Since
then, his prolific and provocative work‹seven novels, a dozen novellas,
over 120 short stories‹has kept him squarely in the spotlight, with
translations available in a dozen languages. Su Tong won the 2009 Man
Asian Literary Prize for his novel The Boat to Redemption.
 

Translator biography

Josh Stenberg has translated two collections of Su Tong¹s shorter fiction,
Madwoman on the Bridge and Other Stories (2008) and Tattoo: Three Novellas
(2010). He is a Lecturer at Nanjing Normal University and a PhD candidate
in Chinese Theater at Nanjing University.

 
2010 paperback: 978-0-9836599-0-7

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