Review of "Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short Stories," selected and translated by Aili Mu, Julie Chiu and Howard Goldblatt

 Review of

Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short Stories, selected and translated by Aili Mu, Julie Chiu and Howard Goldblatt, ISBN 0231138482

Five out of five stars

Short and potent

The title of this book has two origins. The first is based on the events of 1958 in Beijing, China. At the urging of Mao Zedong, the residents engaged in a campaign against sparrows. For three days and nights the residents did everything they could to create a massive amount of noise that disoriented the sparrows. Unable to land and rest, over four hundred thousand died. Then, the predictable happened. With no sparrows to eat the insects, the population exploded, and the grain harvest was lost, leading to famine. The second point of origin is the Chinese description of a good short-short story, “small as a sparrow, but has all the vital organs.”

 Following that criteria, these sparrows are indeed loud in the literary sense. The situations depicted in the stories cover a wide swath of real and imaginary human situations. Supposed marital infidelity to having a two-way conversation with a horse to food and drink scenarios to traveling situations are just some of the topics covered. In nearly all cases, the quick reading of the story leaves some mental residue. Sometimes you ponder a potential deeper meaning, most of the time the response is to mentally nod your mind in agreement.

 Many authors have stated that the short story is the hardest to write, for every word has to be exactly right. Following that criteria, the authors labored hard and long to fill this book.

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