The Noodle Maker
SynopsisPlot
Two men meet for dinner each week. Over the course of one of these drunken evenings, the writer recounts the stories he would write, had he the courage: a young man buys an old kiln and opens a private crematorium, delighting in his ability to harass the corpses of police officers and Party secretaries, while swooning to banned Western music; a heartbroken actress performs a public suicide by stepping into the jaws of a wild tiger, watched nonchalantly by her ex-lover. Extraordinary characters inspire him, their lives pulled and pummeled by fate and politics, as if they are balls of dough in the hands of an all-powerful noodle maker.
Story
About this book
Two men meet for their weekly dinner in a Chinese city. One is a writer who keeps his best material to himself. Across a long, drink-filled evening he describes the stories he would set down if he had the nerve. Each follows ordinary people whose lives bend under political pressure. One tale concerns a young man who buys a disused kiln and runs a private crematorium, taking satisfaction in his authority over the bodies of officials.
Another follows an actress whose heartbreak ends in a fatal public act involving a wild tiger, watched without emotion by the man who left her. The title image ties the pieces together: citizens are pulled and pressed like balls of dough by a power that is absolute and hard to read. Ma Jian works through dark comedy and surreal episodes.
The stories-within-a-story structure lets the unnamed writer voice what his public silence forbids, covering work, art, love, and the rituals around death. The novel is set in the People's Republic of China and was written in Chinese. Its tone moves between satire and bleakness, sometimes inside a single scene.
