The Noodle Maker

"One of the most important and courageous voices in Chinese literature." --Gao Xingjian, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature

From the highly acclaimed Ma Jian comes a satirical and powerfully written novel about the absurdities and cruelties of life in a post-Tianamen China caught between the provincialism of totalitarian politics and the seductions of Western-style capitalism.

Two men, a writer of political propaganda and a professional blood donor, meet for dinner each week. Over the course of one drunken evening, the writer recounts the stories he would write, had he the a young man buys an old kiln from an art school and opens a private crematorium, delighting in his ability to harass the corpses of police officers and Party secretaries, while swooning to banned Western music; a heartbroken actress performs a public suicide by stepping into the jaws of a wild tiger, watched nonchalantly by her ex-lover. Extraordinary characters inspire him, their lives pulled and pummeled by fate and politics, as if they are balls of dough in the hands of an all-powerful noodle maker.

Ma Jian's satirical masterpiece allows us a humorous, yet profound glimpse of those struggling to survive under a system that dictates their every move.