Philip Roth: THE GHOST WRITER (3.5/5)

This is the first novel in Roth's Zuckerman trilogy, about Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. In 1950s, when Nathan, 23, a budding story teller, was invited by E. I. Lonoff- alledgedly patterned after Bernard Malamud- his literary idol, in his New England house, he met the great writer, his wife, and his former student, a girl who thought that she was Anne Frank. Through a series of vignettes, the novel ponders on the chasm between life and literature, the quandary between responsibility to one's art versus responsibility to one's race or family , and the usefullness or futility of sacrificing one over the other.

I think we can sum up the novel's thesis by the motto pasted on E. I. Lonoff's den:

"We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." - Henry James

Toni Morrison: SULA (5/5)

"And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous."

Bottom, i.e., bottom of heaven, is an ironic name for a hilly village above the valley town of Medallion, Ohio. It was here where, spanning over five decades of birth, loss, and extraordinary scenes of survival, madness, and anger, the story of two friends, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, was laid in a grand pattern. These vivid and powerful accounts of black experience over those years exploded near the end in a spectacular fashion.

Dai Sijie: BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS (3.5/5)

At the height of China's cultural revolution, boys and girls who had graduated from high school were sent to the countryside to be re-educated, Mao Zhedong’s idea, a reflection of his hatred of the intellectuals. Also, Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry were scrapped from the curriculum. Normally, re-education lasted for three months, but may take years for the sons and daughters of the enemies of the people: the intellectuals. At this time, 1971, Luo,18 years old, and his bestfriend, the unnamed narrator, 17, were banished to be re-educated in a mountain village called Phoenix of the Sky, where the nearest neighboring village was 100 kilometers away. This is the story of their survival, made possible by friendship, books, and love, in one of the darkest periods of Chinese history.