Bruce Humes

“English is yet another autobiographical novel of the Cultural Revolution-years, narrated by a boy named Love Liu and covering most of his teenage years. It is set in the far west of China, in Ürümchi, in Xinjiang.

       It is a time when one still has to closely watch what one says, and political correctness (of sorts) is taken to all extremes. Much is, however, also arbitrary, with a great deal of power in the hands of those in the right positions — something several of the men in the novel use to obtain sexual favours from women. Here out in the hinterland politics isn’t quite as straightforward as perhaps in the large coastal urban centres, but Mao is still god – and with the building (and testing) of a hydrogen bomb in the area the government does keep a tight grip on things.

       Not everything is quite as one might expect. Much seems arbitrary from the child’s point of view, as he is not privy to or aware of what goes into the decisions that are made, but even aside from that things such as the sudden possibility of learning English are surprising:

         Russian was gone. Uyghur was gone. English was coming.”

Read the whole review at the Literary Saloon, or for a review + an interview with the translators, check out Growing Up Han in a Fictional Xinjiang.