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Obama biography to hit shelves


The Bridge, Barack Obama\’s biography by David Remnick. (Photo: globaltimes.cn)
U.S .President Barack Obama is never far from international news headlines and now a biography of his personal life and ascendancy to the presidency is due to hit the shelves in early April, offering a fresh new perspective and multi-dimensional look at the U.S.\’ first African-American president.
Titled The Bridge, The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, the work, by David Remnick, is a detailed narration of Obama\’s childhood, schooling and his ambitions and convictions. It also includes some of Obama\’s private letters to his mother, providing readers with a unique insight into Obama\’s inner-most thoughts.
Through countless on-the-record interviews with Obama\’s family members, friends, teachers and the president himself, Remnick presents the story of a young man\’s journey from a community organizer, to a brilliant student at Harvard and his entry into politics.
Remnick is a Pulitzer Prize winner, editor of The New Yorker and author of the best-selling King of the World, a biography of boxing legend, Muhammad Ali.
(Source: Global Times)

Best-selling books on officialdom

Director of Beijing Representative Office 
By Wang Xiaofang
This is a novel that swept the Chinese book market since it was first published in 2007. By depicting Ding Nengtong, director of the Beijing representative office of Dongzhou city, and his relationship with the mayor and other senior city officials, the book gives readers an in-depth look into bureaucratic life and how some upright officials become corrupt while others refuse to give up on their duties and obligations.
The Secretary-general
By Hong Fang
A realistic portrayal of the life of a secretary-general. The job in a city government is multi-faced: sometimes the holder has to tell everything, sometimes he has to play dumb, sometimes he needs to fight fires and other times he needs to behave more like a goalkeeper. Above all, secretary-generals have to be smart, cautious and unbiased and balance it all while walking on a high-wire.
The Secretary of Vice-Minister
By Yu Zhuo
This work of fiction unfolds from the perspective of Wen Pu and the pressure he faces as the secretary of a vice -minister. The book lets us witness the love-and-hate, ups-and-downs, lust for money and the shift of power, and shows us how Wen learns to become an official himself.
The Mayor’s Secretary
By Wang Xiaofang
This book tells the story of Zhang Guochang, a vice mayor, who fails to resist the temptation of wealth and finally is put into prison and sentenced to death due for corruption. Li Mo, his secretary who witnessed Zhang’s transformation from mayor to prisoner, also had his own struggles.

Political novels popular as survival kits

A man browses through a book offering advice on becoming an official, at a bookstore in Beijing.


Before Wu Xinmin, a 28-year-old Beijing chengguan officer goes to sleep at night, he reads a fiction story that he downloaded from the Internet on his MP4 player. It is called Director of Beijing Representative Office III.
It takes a lot of time to finish reading the 300-page work, which depicts a world of political struggles between city officials. Yet Wu said he is addicted: “It is such a vivid account of bureaucracy that I cannot help but continue to read it,” he said. “I also discuss the characters on an online forum.”
Wu is not the only fan of such literature.
Bureaucracy-themed fiction has emerged as a popular catchphrase for Wu and other Chinese civil servants. They now form the largest readership of the officialdom-themed genre, a recent survey said.

Though vaguely defined, this genre of books usually centers on one or some officials, depicting either good or inept governance of them. Their personal and bureaucratic relationships always weigh heavily in the plot.
Nearly 80 percent of 690 respondents in a survey conducted by Sina.com and Decision Making, an Anhui-based magazine, said they have read the books. More than one-third said they work as civil servants.
The second and third largest groups of readers are people who own businesses or work for government institutions, both accounting for 20 percent.
Bureaucracy-themed fiction first emerged in China in 1999 when author Wang Yuewen published Chinese Painting, a book providing an overview of the bureaucratic wrestling match through Zhu Huaijing, a fictional figure, and his ups-and-downs when he worked in a small city in South China. The genre has been gaining in popularity ever since.
More than 120 new titles came out from January to March last year. Only 118 new works were published in 2008, according to Hudong,com, China’s largest online encyclopedia.
Major Web portals, like Sina and Sohu, have pages dedicated to the latest bureaucracy-themed fiction. Some books, like Wang Xiaofang’s Director of Beijing Representative Office, which was published in 2007, are still on best-seller lists.
“It is exciting to read chapters concerning political fights and anti-corruption plots,” said Wu. “But certainly the work about the dark side of bureaucracy teaches us lessons we should avoid.”
Ding Dong, an online critic, said there are a couple of reasons to explain the sudden reading craze of the genre.
Most civil servants read the books for recreation, Ding said.
Yet they also read for serious reasons, to gain experience, to understand how to deal with what at times are complicated bureaucratic relationships for the future growth of their careers, Ding said.
Civil servant has become one of the most sought after jobs for Chinese young people due to its stability and benefits.
On Nov 30, 2009 almost 1 million people nationwide took the civil service entrance exam. They were competing for only 15,000 posts.
Xiao Xiong, a postgraduate from a local university in Beijing, took the test. He said he read the bureaucracy-themed fictions not only to relax but also to learn.
“These books help give me more of an inside look at bureaucratic life,” he said.
Yet some book critics say it is important for readers to remember that the books, at the end of the day, are only fiction.
“The keen readers want to peep into the real face of the bureaucratic life by reading these books as ‘textbooks’,” Shan Shibing, a book critic, said.
“They are wrong in thinking that way.”

Mo Yan spawns fresh controversy

Emerging in the mid 1980s as a young experimentalist, Mo Yan is one of the greatest Chinese-language writers today.
While many writers have given up or switched to other professions, Mo continues to surprise and delight readers and critics alike with a new masterpiece every few years.
His 11th novel, Frog , published in Shanghai last month, is another tour de force, three years after the publication of Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out.
Like many of his stories, Frog is set in the novelist’s hometown of Gaomi, in Shandong province. Dealing with the controversial family planning policy, the woman protagonist, Aunt, joins My Grandma in Mo’s The Red Sorghum Family and Mother in his Big Breasts and Wide Hips (pictured).

However, unlike My Grandma and Mother, who are established as positive models of women’s emancipation, this Aunt is half-angel, half-devil; a rich and complex character.
On the one hand, as a brilliant midwife and gynecologist, Aunt brings thousands of healthy babies into the world. On the other hand, as a loyal Communist Party member, she faithfully defends the Party’s family planning policy.
Aunt marries an artisan who is known for making clay dolls. She asks her husband to make clay dolls of babies, which can be seen as a way of repentance.
Frog consists of five chapters. Somewhat similar to Mo’s The Republic of Wine, published in 1992, this book is also composed in an epistolary manner. In his 1992 novel, the correspondences between the character “Mo Yan” and the amateur writer, Li Yidou, as well as Li’s writing practices, form a sub-plot to the detective story in which a case of cannibalism is investigated.
In Frog, each of the five chapters is opened by a letter from the first-person narrator, Ke Dou, or Tadpole, to a respected Japanese writer, who is believed to take Kenzaburo Oe as his prototype. In the first four chapters, the stories of Aunt, as narrated by Tadpole, follow his letters.
What makes Frog different from The Republic of Wine in terms of structure is the last chapter, in which the letter is followed by a nine-act play about an absurd case of a “substitute mother” in Aunt’s remaining years, written by Tadpole. The combination of correspondence, narratives and drama is a successful experiment that gives the reader a fresh reading experience.
The title, Wa, has different meanings. First of all, it is a homophone, part of the name nuwa, the legendary goddess who created human beings and patched up the sky. Secondly, this character is close to wa, meaning “child” (the only difference lies in the tones – the frog character is in first tone and the child character in second tone). Thirdly, frogs are known for their fertility and thus are totemic animals in certain areas of China.
This is not the first time that Mo has touched upon the theme of family planning in China. Similar plots have appeared in his earlier stories, such as Abandoned Child, Tunnel, and Explosions. In other words, the motif of the novel Frog existed in Mo’s mind for quite a long time.
Mo always shows solicitude for the lives of his countrymen and explores controversial and sensitive topics, such as the family planning policy.
The reader may have his or her own interpretations of the story, but this is part of the attraction of reading such a richly absorbing writer.
The author is a professor with Wittenberg University. Her book on Mo Yan will soon be published.

`Becoming Jane Eyre’ shows spirit’s triumph

In this book cover image released by Penguin, ‘Becoming Jane Eyre,’ by Sheila Kohler, is shown.[Agencies]
“Becoming Jane Eyre,” (Penguin Books, 256 pages, $15) by Sheila Kohler: Charlotte Bronte was a dutiful daughter of the Victorian age. Her best-known character, Jane Eyre, endures as a woman who transcends time and social order. How Charlotte released Jane into the world is the subject of Sheila Kohler’s new novel, “Becoming Jane Eyre.”

Charlotte Bronte was the third of a poor curate’s six children. Her childhood was marked by her mother’s death from cancer and two sisters’ deaths from neglect in a sinister boarding school. Her adult life was at times defined by the agony of waiting for responses to the explosive letters she sent to friends, a married man who had been her teacher, and her flirty publisher. Otherwise, most of her days were spent tending the needs of her restrictive father and a brother who drank himself to disgrace and then death.
Rather than recreate every deathbed scene and lover’s letdown, Kohler focuses on the seven years when Bronte and her remaining sisters, Emily and Anne, were writing in their father’s house, publishing their novels under pseudonyms and reacting to critics who considered their heroines “coarse.”
Kohler illuminates how Charlotte created a character who could act on the emotions she was forced to suppress. Jane says-loudly, brazenly-all the things Charlotte cannot say.
Charlotte’s imagination was the one place where she was not bound by decorum. Her unrequited love, her loneliness, the indignity of dependence, her rage at her inability to express herself openly -even to her father-all feed the story of a young governess who will not be overlooked.
“Becoming Jane Eyre,” rather than dwelling on a family’s tragedies, shows a spirit’s triumph.

Book Talk: Tracy Chevalier finds inspiration in museum

The idea for Tracy Chevalier’s latest novel “Remarkable Creatures” came to her in a dinosaur museum in Dorset, England.
Chevalier’s novel tells the story of Mary Anning, a fossil-collecting woman in the 19th century, whose discoveries challenged the predominant thinking of her era.
The acclaimed historical novelist, best-known for “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” said it wasn’t the first time that inspiration had struck in a museum.
Once she has stumbled on a topic she wants to explore, the key is lots of historical research, she said.

Chevalier told Reuters that she is sometimes envious of contemporary novelists who write based on their own experience — but added that the amount of historical research needed for even small details stops her writing from becoming “sloppy.”
Q: How do you come up with the ideas for your novels?
A: “I don’t ever go looking for an idea. It just seems to spring up on me when I least expect it and it has happened a few times when I’m at a museum.
“This time it was at a dinosaur museum in Dorset. There was a display about Mary Anning and she just struck me as an unusual person. The fact she was working class and didn’t start out as a scientist but she was collecting fossils to sell them to make a living and fell into this scientific discovery.
“And the fact she was struck by lightning as a baby, I just though that’s a great way to start a novel, so I decided right then and there that I was going to write a novel about her.”
Q: You seem to be drawn to the stories of working class women at unique points in history?
A: “I suppose it is a way to tell a familiar story through a different set of eyes. But in this case, it’s the fossil that is representing a challenge to an old way of thinking. You could say everybody in the 19th century had creationist thinking about the world and saw the bible as a literal history of the world and it hadn’t occurred to people to question that.
“(After) the discoveries Mary made, and other discoveries … people started questioning these beliefs. That also drew me, that it was such an unusual period of time, a breakout period for science. I’m not a scientist at all, so that was quite challenging, but I enjoy a challenge. ”
Q: How much research goes into your novels?
A: “A lot. Sometimes I envy contemporary writers, though perhaps that’s unfair as all novelists have to do some research. If you’re setting a novel in the banking world of New York, unless you are a banker, you’d have to do research.
“But what’s harder about what I do, I have to learn the day-to-day social details, Even if you weren’t a banker, you’d probably know what kind of clothes they wear, or places they go to. I need to research every detail. ”
Q: Why did you place such emphasis on female friendship in “Remarkable Creatures?”
A: “I wanted it (to be) as much a book about the people, and about what women can get from friendship. We have this stereotype of Jane Austen novels where the women at the end find the man they marry. The two women in ‘Remarkable Creatures’ never married. In a way it’s also an exploration of what women in that period, if they didn’t marry, what did they do instead. It’s an alternative to Jane Austen.”
Q: What are you working on now?
A: “I’m finally setting a novel in the States. It’s going to be in 19th century Ohio and it’s about an English Quaker family that emigrates to Ohio and end up working on the Underground Railroad helping to free slaves.”
Q: Where did that idea originate?
A: “I was visiting Ohio and Toni Morrison was there unveiling a bench. Years ago in an interview she said ’slavery has no monuments to it, not even a bench by the side of the road’. Some people took up that comment, and decided to put benches in places that were important to the history of slavery.
“It made me think about the Underground Railroad. And at the same time I was thinking about Quakerism. I went to Quaker camp when I was a child and it had a real effect on me. So I was thinking about how little silence there is in the world these days and how I miss silence. I put the two together and so the story is about a quiet 19th century woman who works on the Underground Railroad. So it all came together that way. ”

The big ten books of 2009

1. King Gesa r , by Alai

Known as the world’s longest epic, King Gesar is an ancient Tibetan story about the legendary King Gesar’s birth, fight against evil and return to heaven. Tibetan author Alai joined the worldwide Myth Series project, initiated by British publisher Canongate Books, to retell the legend, some five years ago.
The author spent several years journeying in the areas where Tibetans believe King Gesar once lived. He also visited folk storytellers – farmers or herders, who wake up from a dream and suddenly begin telling the story of the King.
He structured the story with the parallel lives of King Gesar with modern day ballad singer Jigme.
Alai gained great fame with the best seller Red Poppies, a book based on legends in his hometown, where the Khampa Tibetans have lived for centuries. At the height of his writing career, Alai ran a science-fiction magazine based in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and successfully turned it into one of the world’s leading science fiction magazines, with a circulation of 400,000 in just a few years.
2. Frog, by Mo Yan

This is another iconic work by Mo Yan, one of the most important and prolific writers in today’s China. The bold novel is destined to become a classic as it deals with the sensitive topic of the family planning policy.
Mo says he has built “a lab of human nature” where he subjects the characters to extreme circumstances in order to determine what is the essence of humanity. In this novel, the protagonist is based on Mo’s aunt, a countryside doctor who delivered Mo and thousands of others and carried out the family planning policy.
Different from other contemporary works that seem to be milking the cow of the “cultural revolution” (1966-76), Mo covers a broad time span, from the 1940s to the present day. The latter part of the book brilliantly reflects the bizarre realities of a materialistic Chinese society.
Xu Kun, who has a PhD in literature from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is a faithful fan of Mo.
“After reading the novel, I have to say Mo Yan has found a smart way of writing about these topics,” Xu says.
3. Little Reunion, by Eileen Chang

Viewed by many critics as a classic, the largely autobiographic novel was published 14 years after the reclusive writer’s death. It depicts Chang’s relations with her family members and the bitter love story involving her first husband Hu Lancheng, a collaborator for the Japanese during World War II.
Best known among non-Chinese readers for Lust, Caution, on which Ang Lee based his award-winning film, Chang provides sharp insights into people’s personalities. Hsia Chih-tsing, a retired professor of Chinese at Columbia University, calls her the most gifted Chinese writer to emerge in the 1940s and compares her with writers like Flannery O’Connor and Franz Kafka.
The affairs of Chang’s declining aristocratic family and details of her love affairs in the book have, unsurprisingly, stirred up heated talk among Chinese readers and critics.
“The autobiographical work is important in that it provides new sources for research about its author,” says Zhang Yiwu, literature professor of Peking University. “In the book, a single woman’s ups and downs are interwoven with historical trends and changes.”

New book reveals “secret” of Apollo moonfall

Bolivian writer Eduardo Ascarrunz holds a copy of The Miami Herald front page dated July 21, 1969 in La Paz, January 2, 2010. The arrival of man on the moon four decades ago was as unexpected to witness as an alien spacecraft, reveals one of the U.S. astronauts quoted in Ascarrunz’s book.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

Get smart with money books

There are some really good personal finance books on the shelves these days — volumes that can help you manage your money better, earn more on your investments, or plan a good retirement. But those books are surrounded by dozens of others that are less good — so choosing the right one becomes the key to success.
A good money book is a great gift for yourself, especially if you’ve received any book-store gift cards during the holiday season. If not, try your local library.
Here’s an admittedly idiosyncratic roundup of some of the best of the current crop:

“Making the Most of Your Money” by Jane Bryant Quinn (Simon & Schuster, $35). At 1,242 pages, this hardcover isn’t just a financial book, it’s a fitness book, too. Do 10 reps lifting it over your head and you’ll build muscle. Read 10 pages, at random, anywhere in the book, and you’ll learn something smart about how to handle your finances. Quinn is, of course, the queen of personal finance writing and this newly updated classic covers everything from credit scores to interest rates to tuition to bond mutual funds. The advice is wise and consumerist, and you can use it like the encyclopedia that it is.

“10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget” by the writers of Wise Bread (Skyhorse Publishing, $14.95), is a nice hands-on book for how to save money on everyday life. Wise Bread (www.wisebread.com) is a frugal living website and this books includes lots of specific resources and tips on items like inexpensive romantic dates, cheap dinners, free health care and travel deals. It’s a little less specific and more generic in its sections on investing. Alas, the publisher may have gone too far down the bargain route itself by having the book printed cheaply in China. Though attractively laid out, the volume has a stiff spine and is difficult to hold open.

“Stop Getting Ripped Off” by Bob Sullivan (Ballentine books, $15). Sullivan blogs the “Red Tape Chronicles” for MSNB (redtape.msnbc.com/) and he’s a wonderful pro-consumer storyteller. This book tackles banks, insurance companies, cell phone services and more. Learn the questions to ask and the deals to cut so you can stop being a patsy.

The 10 Best Books of 2009

After so many years, and so many lists, you might think the task of choosing the 10 Best Books would get easier. If only. The sublime story collections alone created agonies of indecision. So did the superb literary biographies we read-and deeply admired. But in the end the decisions had to be made.
Not that drawing up the list-or rather, whittling it down-was a wholly painful exercise. One of the pleasures it afforded was the chance to resample the sometimes surprising chemistry of reviewers and authors, particularly when it came to fiction. Jonathan Lethem, whose “Chronic City” made our list, reviewed Lorrie Moore’s novel “A Gate at the Stairs,” which made it too, while Curtis Sittenfeld, whose novel “Prep” was one of the 10 Best in 2005, reviewed Maile Meloy’s story collection “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It,” a winner this year. Any book review editor will attest that persuading fiction writers to assess other people’s fiction can be a struggle. These were heartening exceptions to the rule. May more novelists review for us in 2010!