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A review by roxanamalinachirila
The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun
3.0
I never want to see this book again in my life.
It isn't badly written; on the contrary, I think it accomplishes what it meant to accomplish quite well: reading it, you feel like walking endlessly through a fog, trying to find meaning, disconnected from anyone and anything, lost, alienated.
At first, I thought that calling a book that's barely 113 pages long a "novel" is a bit inappropriate. Surely, it would be better described as a novella? Especially since it has a fairly long introduction? But no. Having read it, it feels longer, all-encompassing, endless. There is no escaping the fog in Ürümqi.
So, what's it about?
"I don't know anyone in this strange city, so it's impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone."
An Uyghur man gets a job in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang region in China. His office doesn't provide him with a place to stay, so one night he wanders off to find one. What we get is his journey through the fog. People pretend not to notice him, or they're openly hostile. He tried to get directions, but only gets fear and aggression in return. And all the while, he's walking the streets and thinking of a random piece of paper with numbers on it; he found it on the floor at the office and he's been trying hard to interpret it ever since. Some numbers look like his height, or his age.
As he walks, he also remembers things from his childhood, or his time as a student in Beijing, his time at the office. His father getting drunk, the superstition of always starting a journey with one's right foot, the smiling man who makes him write a letter at work, the isolation in Beijing. I'm making this sound more like a story than it is - instead, these memories come over him like people walking in through the fog, disconnected, timeless, one on top of the other, starting and ending without going anywhere, sometimes repeating or rewriting themselves as he walks along and mixes life and philosophy and madness.
The book's honestly quite great at creating the feeling of loss and despair. Everything is significant, including numbers randomly seen on papers; nothing is significant. The sentence that appears over and over, "I don't know anyone in this strange city, so it's impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone", feels at first like a statement of truth, then like one of isolation, and finally like a shield. How can people hate him, when he doesn't know anyone? But they do.
It's honestly the introduction that makes this book worthwhile. Explaining the context in which it was written (by an Uyghur man, about the Uyghur experience in China, influenced by his European studies, read by Uyghur men who find themselves in his work, and probably incarcerated by the Chinese government some time after writing this book, presumably to be released in 17 years) gave it a meaning I don't think it would have had for me otherwise.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Columbia University Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
It isn't badly written; on the contrary, I think it accomplishes what it meant to accomplish quite well: reading it, you feel like walking endlessly through a fog, trying to find meaning, disconnected from anyone and anything, lost, alienated.
At first, I thought that calling a book that's barely 113 pages long a "novel" is a bit inappropriate. Surely, it would be better described as a novella? Especially since it has a fairly long introduction? But no. Having read it, it feels longer, all-encompassing, endless. There is no escaping the fog in Ürümqi.
So, what's it about?
"I don't know anyone in this strange city, so it's impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone."
An Uyghur man gets a job in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang region in China. His office doesn't provide him with a place to stay, so one night he wanders off to find one. What we get is his journey through the fog. People pretend not to notice him, or they're openly hostile. He tried to get directions, but only gets fear and aggression in return. And all the while, he's walking the streets and thinking of a random piece of paper with numbers on it; he found it on the floor at the office and he's been trying hard to interpret it ever since. Some numbers look like his height, or his age.
As he walks, he also remembers things from his childhood, or his time as a student in Beijing, his time at the office. His father getting drunk, the superstition of always starting a journey with one's right foot, the smiling man who makes him write a letter at work, the isolation in Beijing. I'm making this sound more like a story than it is - instead, these memories come over him like people walking in through the fog, disconnected, timeless, one on top of the other, starting and ending without going anywhere, sometimes repeating or rewriting themselves as he walks along and mixes life and philosophy and madness.
The book's honestly quite great at creating the feeling of loss and despair. Everything is significant, including numbers randomly seen on papers; nothing is significant. The sentence that appears over and over, "I don't know anyone in this strange city, so it's impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone", feels at first like a statement of truth, then like one of isolation, and finally like a shield. How can people hate him, when he doesn't know anyone? But they do.
It's honestly the introduction that makes this book worthwhile. Explaining the context in which it was written (by an Uyghur man, about the Uyghur experience in China, influenced by his European studies, read by Uyghur men who find themselves in his work, and probably incarcerated by the Chinese government some time after writing this book, presumably to be released in 17 years) gave it a meaning I don't think it would have had for me otherwise.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Columbia University Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.