Reviews: Book

The Last Village

Cao Naiqian, a 58-year-old cop in Datong, North China's Shanxi Province, penned his first short story in 1986 as a bet with his friends. The story, The Scenery of Wenjiayao Village, was published in the high-profile Beijing Literature magazine two years later. Encouraged by its unexpected success, Cao has been engaged in short story writing ever since.

The Beijing-based China Radio & Television Publishing House recently published The Last Village, a collection of short stories Cao has written over the past few years.

Earlier a coalminer and a folk musician, Cao paints a colorful but somewhat weird picture of the life of rural people through the short stories, all set in Wenjiayao Village which exists in real life.

With a dual theme of hunger and sexual desire, these neatly written stories are, without exception, characterized by Cao's adept use of witty and rough local dialects and a wealth of folk songs he became familiar with during his stay in the village in the 1970s.

Zhu Linyong

(China Daily 03/27/2007 page20)