What readers think of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, plus links to write your own review.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is poetry in prose. It is a little book of joy. I would highly recomend to any one who enjoys fine literature. Hopefully we see more of Dai Sijie in the future.

This was a terrible read. It contains no energy or flow whatsoever. Very dull and uneventful.

Very Good Book. However, I have a few questions. What did the ox tail in the book suitcase mean? What did the ravens mean?

This book was excellent! Written in the very sparing style of Ancient Eastern fables, the plot is easy enough to understand, but the beauty is that it works on many deeper levels too. There is a great amount of symbolism, from the ever circling red-beaked ravens to the buffalo tail that is found among the contraband Western Books. After reading this little novel, you will want to run to your nearest library and read up on some Balzac!

This is a sparkling, brightly written account of a terrible time in Chinese history. The Cultural Revolution was a euphemism for Mao Zedong's despotic control of a huge mass of people, attesting to the adage that "...absolute power corrupts absolutely". I enjoyed the great humor that Dai Sijie manages to evoke from the essentially dark situation the protagonists are in. Their youth, their intelligence and their talents save them from despair and somehow even enable them to turn their condition into something positive. Love, incipient desire, and the ominous threat of danger all hang in the air. I await the film that will be made from this story.

I was reading this book for mah HS honors class and i enjoy reading this book. It's not all that but yet it's not bad either.

this novel is trully wonderful......as well as being a part of history, dai sijie has turned this dark era into a magical story......i am looking forward to futur bestsellers from this talented author...i've been reading through other reviews and how dare they say that this book is confusing....i have something to say to them: read this novel again, and if it still hasn't amazed you then you should go the doctors, you have a serious problem!!

It was a very good book. It was easy to read, and it taught me a lot about the cultural revolution.