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A review by nini23
The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun
Did not finish book. Stopped at 35%.
I was very interested to read a translated book of fiction from an Uyghur writer. My thanks to Columbia University Press and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. It's difficult to say whether it's the original writing style or the translation of Darren Byler that soured my reading experience. The bombastic self-righteous introduction by Byler certainly didn't do it any favours. There is another Uyghur translator who is unnamed due to having been disappeared. This short novel is in a stream of consciousness style with a deliberate disorienting bleak isolating effect meant to reflect the protagonist's mental state. This literary device can be wielded to great effect such as with László Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance.
I made a good faith effort to plow through the book but picked it up and put it down repeatedly over a few weeks with little enthusiasm. The last straw was when the protagonist was leering at a woman emerging from a public washroom at an out of the way place and thinking to himself that she 'smells like semen.' How uncomfortable and unsafe did this woman feel being stared at hungrily like that? Being oppressed does not give an excuse to oppress others. The suggestion that she is dressed provocatively is just gross.
There are many non-fiction memoir books by Ugyhers detailing their experiences in the hands of the Chinese state. I intend to turn to those for a better understanding instead.
I made a good faith effort to plow through the book but picked it up and put it down repeatedly over a few weeks with little enthusiasm. The last straw was when the protagonist was leering at a woman emerging from a public washroom at an out of the way place and thinking to himself that she 'smells like semen.' How uncomfortable and unsafe did this woman feel being stared at hungrily like that? Being oppressed does not give an excuse to oppress others. The suggestion that she is dressed provocatively is just gross.
There are many non-fiction memoir books by Ugyhers detailing their experiences in the hands of the Chinese state. I intend to turn to those for a better understanding instead.