GREEN RIVER DAYDREAMS

A richly detailed realistic saga from the Chinese author best known for his novel Black Snow (1993) and for stories reshaped into the critically praised films Ju Dou and Red Sorghum. Narrated by an elderly house servant, “Ears” (in his 100th year), it’s a below-stairs account of a wealthy industrial family’s disintegration, beginning in 1908, when the Caos’ Western-educated “second son” Guanghan returns home energized by socialist principles and accompanied by the French engineer who will unsettle both Guanghan’s unwanted arranged marriage and his conservative family’s resistance to change. The family’s turmoil is a convincing metaphor for the embattled Quing Empire, crumbling almost visibly from within. An absorbing tale, comparable to the fiction of Liu Heng’s accomplished contemporary Su Tong, and perhaps also Zola (who may well have inspired them both) at his incendiary best.