A Private Life (Weatherhead Books on Asia) Book

Set against a backdrop of the decades that included the Cultural Revolution and the Tian'anmen Square Incident, A Private Life portrays the effect of that social change and political turbulence on the protagonist´s inner life as she moves from childhood to early maturity. Ni Niuniu is a talented and remarkable young woman who, unable to bear the clamor and hypocrisy of the world around her, secludes herself in a painstakingly created spiritual garden, where she can enjoy an isolated and lonely "truth and beauty." With such an attitude, she is considered abnormal by those around her and diagnosed as psychotic by her doctor. In a rapidly modernizing Beijing, Ni Niuniu reveals her personal identity through the melancholy she experiences in a life of urban alienation. As she takes us further and further into her psyche, the lines between writer, narrator, and protagonist blur but her innermost secrets, sexual experiences, and fantasies are vividly displayed.Read More