It’s a tragic story and Lianke uses it to tell a cautionary tale about a rush to progress that seems to cast humanity to the winds. According to the Wikipedia article, it is estimated that over 40% of the blood donors (sellers) contracted AIDS, due to the low health and safety standards applied to the campaign. The story was inspired by the fallout that occurred from Henan Province‘s plasma economy, 1991-1995, in which Chinese were encouraged to sell their blood plasma. No wonder this novel was published in Hong Kong and banned in China! For a start, Camus does not make his political “reading” literal while Lianke closely intertwines the political with the personal in his novel. Both books explore a community living with a highly contagious, deadly disease, and both can be “read” through the lens of a wider political interpretation, but the two stories are told differently. However, as I read on, the similarity started to fade – or, perhaps it’s just that the particularity of Lianke’s conception took over. As I started reading Yan Lianke‘s Dream of Ding Village, I was reminded of a favourite novel of mine, Albert Camus‘ The plague.
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May 2023
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