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Golden age

£9.99

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I was twenty-one years old, stationed at a commune in Yunnan. Chen Qingyang was twenty-six, working as a doctor in the same place. One day, she came down from the mountain to ask me whether she was a loose woman, a so-called old shoe – even though everyone called her an old shoe, she didn’t think it was true. ‘Golden Age’ tells the hilarious and absurd story of Wang Er, exiled as a young man during the Cultural Revolution to a remote part of China, and his love affair with Chen Qingyang. When they are caught by Communist Party officials, Wang Er is forced to write endless confessions of his ‘crime’, which then become very popular indeed with his punishers. Later, as a lecturer at a chaotic, newly built university, Wang Er navigates the bureaucratic maze of 1980’s China, lampooning the realities of government control along the way.

ISBN: 9780241634226 Category:

Description

The bestselling novel by cult writer Wang Xiaobo, a satire of the Cultural Revolution, in its first full English translation

‘Wang Xiaobo is a truly unique writer, and there are very few writers like him’ Ai Weiwei

‘Fills the reader with aching poignancy, and yet makes them want to laugh out loud’ Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans

Twenty-one year old Wang Er, stationed in a remote mountain commune, spends his days herding oxen, napping and dreaming of losing his virginity. His dreams come true in the shape of the beautiful doctor Cheng Qinyang. So begins the riotously funny story of their illicit love affair, the Party officials who enjoy their forced confessions a little too much, and Wang’s life under the Communist regime: his misadventures as a biology lecturer in a Beijing university, and his entanglements with family, friends and lovers. Golden Age is an explosive, subversive, wild and hilarious satire, featuring one of literature’s great protagonists, a sensation when it was published in the 1990s and beloved today.

Additional information

Weight 0.202 kg
Dimensions 19.8 × 13 × 1.4 cm

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