Red Dust

Catalogue Number: 48G-8CR7

Author: Ma Jian
Format: Paperback
Published: 02 May 2002
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099283294

Synopsis

In 1983, Ma Jian turned 30 and was overwhelmed by the desire to escape the confines of his life in Beijing. Deng Xiaoping was introducing economic reform but clamping down on 'Spiritual Pollution'; young people were rebelling. With his long hair, jeans and artistic friends, Ma Jian was under surveillance from his work unit and the police. His ex-wife was seeking custody of their daughter; his girlfriend was sleeping with another man. He could no longer find the inspiration to write or paint. One day he bought a train ticket to the westernmost border of China and set off in search of himself. His journey would last three years and take him to deserts and overpopulated cities. The result is a compelling and utterly unique insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both an insider and an outsider in his own country could have written.

Product Details

Edition: New ed
Total Pages: 336
Genre: Travel writing
Secondary Genre: Biography: general
Illustrations: maps

Author's Biography

Ma Jian was born in Qingdao, China in 1953. He worked as a watchmender's apprentice and a painter of propaganda boards. Later he was assigned the job of photojournalist for a state-run magazine. Aged 30, he left work and travelled for three years across China - a journey later described in his book Red Dust, winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He left Beijing for Hong Kong in 1987 but continued to travel to China, notably to support the pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989. After the hand-over of Hong Kong he moved to Germany and then London, where he now lives. Vintage have also published his novels, The Noodle Maker and Beijing Coma, as well as his story collection about Tibet, Stick Out Your Tongue, the book which prompted the Chinese government to ban Ma Jian's work and which set him on the road to exile.