Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas - Softcover

Can, Xue

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810109883 ISBN 13: 9780810109889

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Old Floating Cloud brings together two of Can Xue’s early novellas, Yellow Mud Street and the titular Old Floating Cloud.
 
Yellow Mud Street tells of a street, its people, and a strange event that happens there. The street is dilapidated, though it once saw better times. The “S” Machinery Factory, which used to run day and night, is rusty and decaying, though people still deceive themselves into thinking this factory is a fine place, the envy of “foreign devils” and an important connection with “the authorities.” One day, “a thing” appears. No one is sure if it is a person, a flash of light, or a cloud of will-o'-the-wisp. It prompts rumor, superstition, political slogans, and an investigation by the authorities. A chorus of paranoid preoccupations wind up and down Yellow Mud Street, in a series of muttered refrains that build to a screaming frenzy.
 
Old Floating Cloud is the ruthlessly unsentimental story of a man who has an affair with his neighbor's wife. Can Xue describes the damage people do to each other, their obsessions, their lack of connection, and their attempts to exert power over one another. Lovers are not the only targets of Can Xue’s biting humor. Resentment flares between parents and children, in-laws spy, and employees abase themselves before their bosses. Like Yellow Mud Street, this novella teems with insects, excrement, and distorted bodies—visceral reminders of our earthbound state.
 

About this title

About the Author

CAN XUE (the pseudonym of Deng Xiao-hua) was born in Changsha, Hunan Province, China in 1953. She has twice been longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and is the author of Dialogues in Paradise and Old Floating Cloud, among many others. 
 

Reviews

Partly to avoid condemnation by the Chinese government and partly in reaction to the social realism of Mao Zedong's regime, Can Xue (Dialogues in Paradise ) has fashioned two stubbornly obscure novellas about contemporary China that veil political and social commentary in symbolic, psychotic grotesquerie. But these overlong anti-narratives will test the limits of readers' patience. In ``Yellow Mud Street,'' Can Xue follows the lives of the inhabitants of an otherworldly neighborhood where black ash ``pours down from the sky like garbage'' and excrement spills from dilapidated latrines; people's bodies stink of sweat, they are in constant fear of government censure and they work at the ``S'' factory producing steel balls for no ostensible purpose. Their one hope is the coming of Wang Zi-guang, a spirit who possibly possesses the truth that will set free their wretched lives. The characters in the title novella live in similarly repulsive circumstances, yet Can Xue concentrates more on warped relationships: parents and children harbor murderous feelings for each other, in-laws butt in where they are not welcome and everyone is always spying on everyone else.

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810109883
• ISBN 13: 9780810109889
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 269