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Christian Dittus
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English

DR. BETHUNE'S CHILDREN

Xue Yiwei

Dr. Bethune's Children is the subversive novel that only Xue Yiwei could write. Xue Yiwei's life has been marked by that of the Dr. Norman Bethune, who died treating the wounded in wartime China. Like millions of other Chinese growing up since the 1960s, when Mao Zedong's eulogy to Bethune was required reading in every elementary school, Xue Yiwei was inspired by the Montreal doctor's self-sacrifice and his dedication to the Chinese regime.

Dr. Bethune's Children tells the stories of the offspring of two ordinary families marked by cataclysms both natural and man-made -- from the Cultural Revolution to the Tiananmen Square massacre, against a backdrop of the international developments that have rocked everyday life from the Cold War to the emergence of the super power that China is today.

Though banned in China, Dr. Bethune's Children is also hailed as a masterpiece (it was published in Taiwan). In focusing on the distress and repression that have marked a whole generation, Xue Yiwei unveils the human heart.

Xue Yiwei is an award-winning Chinese writer born in Chenzhou and raised in Changsha, in Hunan province. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an M.A. in English Literature from Université de Montréal, and a Ph. D. in Linguistics from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He has taught Chinese literature at Shenzhen University and is the author of sixteen books, including four novels--Desertion (1989, reissued 2012), Dr. Bethune's Children (2011), Farewells from a Shadow (2013), and Empty Nest (2014)--and five collections of stories. He lives in Montreal.

(English translation by Darryl Sterk)
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Published 2017-09-01 by Linda Leith Publishing

Comments

Written as a series of digressive letters from the narrator – also living in Montreal – to the doctor's spirit, Dr. Bethune's Children is a novel of ironic wit and deep feeling, marked by a frank sexuality. Too honest, especially on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Dr. Bethune's Children is banned in mainland China.

Xue Yiwei is a maverick in contemporary Chinese literature. He stays alone and aloof, far away from restive crowds back in his homeland. For him, to write is to make a pilgrimage to his masters: Joyce, Borges, Calvino, Proust. He writes with deep devotion and intense concentration. His fiction often meditates on life, history, violence, exile. This selection of stories can open a window into the fiction world he has constructed. As an admirer of his, I salute his courage, his stamina, and his love of solitude. (Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning novelist)