Once on a Moonless Night - Hardcover

Sijie, Dai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307271587 ISBN 13: 9780307271587

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2009

Synopsis

From the author of the beloved best seller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a haunting tale of love and of the beguiling power of a lost language.

When Puyi, the last emperor, was exiled to Manchuria in the early 1930s, it is said that he carried an eight-hundred-year-old silk scroll inscribed with a lost sutra composed by the Buddha. Eventually the scroll would be sold illicitly to an eccentric French linguist named Paul d’Ampere, in a transaction that would land him in prison, where he would devote his life to studying the ineffably beautiful ancient language of the forgotten text.

Our unnamed narrator, a Western student in China in the 1970s, hears this story from the greengrocer Tumchooq—his name the same as that of the language in which the scroll is written—who has recently returned from three years of reeducation. She will come again and again to Tumchooq’s shop near the gates of the Forbidden City, drawn by the young man and his stories of an estranged father. But when d’Ampere is killed in prison, Tumchooq disappears, abandoning the narrator, now pregnant with his child. And it is she, going in search of her lost love, who will at last find the missing scroll and discover the truth of the Buddha’s lesson that begins “Once on a moonless night . . .” in this story that carries us across the breadth of China’s past, the myth and the reality.

About this title

Review

"[A] multilayered masterpiece." --"The San Francisco Chronicle"
"Beautiful. . . . Spectacularly scenic. . . . Impressive. . . . The euphonious sounds of the prose, together with the sensory impressions they unleash, reinforce the book's message that language can offer mesmerizing pleasures." --"The New York Times Book Review"
"Enchant[ing]. . . . Elegantly translated. . . . An intricate and affecting legend of love, loss, and intellectual obsession." --"The Boston Globe"
"An exquisitely structured, dreamlike tale of strange and noble quests, not to mention love, that roams across centuries and touches down in China, Burma, Mali and Paris." --"Kansas City Star," Best 100 Books of the Year
"Haunting and complex. . . . Told with a spare elegance of prose. . . . Abounds in inventive mythology darkly threaded by a tragic love story." --"The Washington Times"
"A freewheeling meditation on language as the divine current that buoys human experience. . . . As a piece of art, encrusted with meaning and mystery, it is rich and strange." --"The Los Angeles Times"
"Much of this wonderfully written book is set against the colorful backdrop of Old Peking and the crisply written narrative is as exciting and powerful as a typhoon." --"Tuscon Citizen"
"At its heart the novel crafts an ode to the power of language." --"National Geographic Traveler"
"[This] complex and well written historical novel . . . grips the audience thoroughly with its poetic look back in time." --"Mainstream Fiction"
"Mesmerizing." --"Audrey" Magazine
"Elegant and thoughtful. . . . Worthwhile and captivating with a beautiful ending sure to resonate with its audience. . . . A celebration of the joy of a good story. [Dai] Sijie delights in storytelling." --Bookreporter.com
"Filled with twists and turn of fate, back stories, symbolism and intersections of politics and religion worthy of a Dan Brown novel. . . . Dai adds layer upon layer of meaning. . . . ["Once Upon a Moonless Night"] pulls the reader along, as does the language, which is pungent and immediate. And as for the scroll itself: this is one mystery, one message, that really makes it worth reading until the last lines of a novel to discover." --"UPI Asia"
""Once on a Moonless Night "is full of tales within tales and worlds within worlds, ranging from ancient Chinese empires through communist China to modern Beijing." --A. S. Byatt, "The Guardian "[UK]
"[Dai] Sijie's ambitious work spans a thousand years of Chinese history. . . . [with] a rich repository of tales, traditions and sensibilities [the book's] theme of indeterminacy of meaning is braided into the clash between East and West. . . . [Dai] Sijie has a gift for the spectacular." --"Times Literary Supplement "[UK]
""Once on a Moonless Night "evokes the past with all the eerie clarity of a dream, its outlines blurred, but every tiny, telling detail extraordinarily alive. Anyone in search of a brief history of China would do well to begin right here." --"Financial Times "[UK]
"[Dai] Sijie's breathtaking story shows the beauty and horrors that make up China's history while the poetry of [Dai] Sijie's words is revealed in Hunter's magnificent translation. It's fitting that a story of a love affair with language should be written so beautifully." --"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"[B]ewitching. . . . As impressionistically historical as it is imaginative, Dai's dreamlike tale of epic quests and love put to the test is exquisitely structured. . . . Dai's dazzling and magical saga intimates that language is transcendent; books are precious; translation is a noble art; stories are the key to freedom; and truth prevails." --"Booklist" (starred review)

Review

'Anyone in search of a brief history of China would do well to begin right here'

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0307271587
• ISBN 13: 9780307271587
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 277