The Noodle Maker
Wednesday, 22 November 2006 @ 20:39
A Novel
by Ma Jian (1993)
Every week a wealthy ‘professional blood donor’, Vlazerim, visits his friend, Sheng, a disillusioned, ‘idealistic’ writer, bringing a wide array of food and drink (that ‘cost twice as much as the professional writer’s monthly wage’) they’d gobble down while they ‘pour their hearts out to each other, insult and curse each other’. The writer has been commissioned by the Party to write a propagandistic novel on Lei Feng, tempted by an offer for an entry to The Great Dictionary of Chinese Writers in return, but all that comes to mind are ‘the characters of his unwritten novel: a young entrepreneur who runs a private crematorium; an illegal migrant who writes letters for the illiterate; a father who spends his life trying to get rid of his retarded daughter…’
