"A Foreign Tongue to Unite Us": Book Traveling with Dai Sijie

Abstract

"Authors like Dai Sijie...help us see how, more and more, members of ["virtual" reading communities] acknowledge and call upon one another by answering the call of an other not with them there and then, an other whose call itself in turn calls for sustained, often sophisticated reading, and first and foremost for a special ability to hear this call over the chasms of geography, politics, and customs." Discusses Dai Sijie's "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" ("Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise") and "Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch" ("Le complexe du Di").