Narrative
Mimosa
綠化樹
Zhang Xianliang · 1984
Synopsis
During the famine that followed the Great Leap Forward, the narrator, an intellectual sentenced to reform through labour, spends a few months on a farm he does not know, between two periods of forced labour. He arrives hungry and destitute. Ma Yinghua, a sturdy, warm and skilful young villager, gives him a small white bun, then shares her food with him and sews him a winter pair of trousers. Around them appear the team leader Xie and another worker, Haixixi.
Context
Written from September to November 1983, the text appeared at the head of the second issue of 1984 of the journal Shiyue and prompted a wide debate, with symposia in Beijing and Yinchuan and more than two hundred articles, according to Chinawriter; in 1985 it received the national prize for the novella. It belongs to a series of narratives drawn from the author's life, and critics read in it the hunger of the re-education camps, food governing the balance of power between the two characters. Gladys Yang translated it into English in 1985; a French translation appeared in Beijing in 1986, with the narrative Xor Bulak, then in Lausanne in 1987.
Who it is for
A long narrative, entirely centred on hunger and a relationship of dependence; it exists in French and in English.
Prizes and reception
Chinawriter reports that in 2018 it was counted among the most significant novels of the reform era.
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