The RAS Book Club will meet to discuss: RED DUST - A Path Through Chinaby Ma Jian, Published by: Random House, Publication Date: 2001
Copies of the book will be available at RAS events prior to this meeting. You may also obtain a copy of the book by contacting the RAS Book Club (see below).
Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to this RAS Book Club event.
N.B. RESERVATIONS ESSENTIAL AS SPACE IS LIMITED AT THIS EVENT.
THE BOOK (written by Random House)
In 1983, at the age of thirty, dissident artist Ma Jian finds himself divorced by his wife, separated from his daughter, betrayed by his girlfriend, facing arrest for “Spiritual Pollution,” and severely disillusioned with the confines of life in Beijing. So with little more than a change of clothes and two bars of soap, Ma takes off to immerse himself in the remotest parts of China. His journey would last three years and take him through smog-choked cities and mountain villages, from scenes of barbarity to havens of tranquility. Remarkably written and subtly moving, the result is an insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both insider and outsider in his own country could have written.
THE AUTHOR (Written by Wikipedia)
Ma was born in Qingdao on 18 August 1953. In 1986, he moved to Hong Kong after a clampdown in which some of his works were banned. In 1997 he left for Germany, followed by a move to England in 1999. He now lives in London with his partner and translator, Flora Drew.
Ma came to the attention of the English-speaking world with his story collection Stick Out Your Tongue, translated into English in 2006. The stories are set in Tibet. Their most remarked-upon feature is that traditional Tibetan culture is not idealized, but rather depicted as harsh and often inhuman; one reviewer noted that the "stories sketch multi-generational incest, routine sexual abuse and ritual rape. The book was banned in China as a "vulgar and obscene book that defames the image of our Tibetan compatriots."
Ma's travel memoir Red Dust: A Path Through China (2001) is about his wanderings through remote areas of China from 1983-86 as a long-haired jobless vagabond. It won the 2002 Thomas Cook Travel Award.