Day 851: Book completed

Hard Like Water by Yan Lianke. This book is very similar to his Serve the People!, which was banned in China, and I'm impressed that he got away with this one, as he continues to live and write in China. It's in what apparently was a popular genre about love and revolution - the same passion that could lead people to enthusiastically endorse the Cultural Revolution could also be expressed erotically - but, I imagine unlike other books in the genre, this one and the other are satires. Our narrator is fully versed in revolutionary socialist rhetoric, but he's very much a loose cannon. He thinks he's serving the People's cause, but somehow the People's cause ends up coinciding with whatever best serves his own lust, desire for power, and sense of vengeance.

It's also very funny at times. I definitely wasn't catching most of the Mao quotations, but as an outsider I could still enjoy the style. Here's a paragraph I noted to post here when I was reading it:

"Immersed in the delight that the revolution - which had not yet begun - would eventually succeed, my heart started pounding. I stood like the protagonist of a revolutionary movie standing on the deck of a boat in a raging storm and about to reach a wharf, and I wished my hair and clothing were being similarly buffeted by the wind, but unfortunately at that moment there was only a light evening breeze. If only there were wind and an ocean! If only I were standing there with long hair flying in the wind! It was not without regret that I placed my hand on my head, debating whether or not I should grow out my hair for the revolution."

At other times he goes on and on with Maoist rhetoric, and at other times he treats us to all the details of his interactions with his lover, a young woman of similar revolutionary fervor. He imagines himself a man of principles, while the reader rolls their eyes and wonders how it will all work out.