I Love Dollars (and Other Stories Of China)
The Age
Saturday April 26, 2008
I Love Dollars (and Other Stories of China)
Zhu Wen Penguin, $24.95ZHU WEN IS KNOWN these days as an award-winning film director. But he was also among the first to capture in fiction the effects of China's transition to unbridled consumerism. I Love Dollars is a collection of six satirical stories that arouse both laughter and disgust. In the title tale, a young author, in a perversion of Confucian filial duty, trawls through a provincial city in an effort to find a prostitute for his father. Ah, Xiao Xie concerns a power plant at which costs spiral uncontrollably, and is probably based on Wen's own experience. In A Hospital Night, a man is forced to care for his girlfriend's ailing father and stays aloof as he is dragged into ridiculous and demeaning situations. Zhu Wen's stories proved popular and influential. They upend a number of Chinese social traditions and critique, in a style that owes something both to Vonnegut and to Kafka, what the author fears has replaced them - a cynical individualism untethered to moral and emotional imperatives.
© 2008 The Age