Getting Used to Dying

by X.L. Zhang and Zhang Xianliang

Book Overview

After spending half his life in Mao's labour camps, a Chinese writer is released. Now approaching middle-age, he travels abroad to lecture and to visit relatives and lovers. There, he finds himself... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060165219
• ISBN13: 9780060165215
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 291 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful true stories

I read this in Chinese ten years ago when I was in College. I loved it. This is one of a few books I have read more than once. My personally opinion is that the first Chinese author who is awarded the Nobel prize should have been the one who writes the stories about the Culture Revolution. And Zhang Xianliang is the one. Before and during the Cultural Revolution Zhang was convicted as an "anti-revolutionary-revisionist" because of his family background and his writing that was not favored by the government. Between 1958 and 1979, Zhang was imprisoned several times and forced to work in labor camps to "reform" himself. Most of his novels are based on his own experiences in the labor camps where his soul and body were tortured. The novel pictures both beautiful and ugly sides of human nature during the most extreme condition in the Chaos of the Culture Revolution. In this and other works, Zhang speculated that the entire intellectual community in China was emasculated in that period. Getting Used to Dying is narrated by two voices which belong to the same person. It juxtaposes the encounter of death and suffering in the labor camps on the one hand, and sexual relationships and self-indulgence afterward on the other. The beginning of the book can be a little bit confusing. My attention was fully drawn by reading from the middle part of the book. The writing is very good in Chinese. Hopefully the translation of English will be as good too. Although my favorite is this one, I also recommend the other book from the same author, Half of Man is Woman, which is more famous in China.