Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police Bureau is "on vacation." Actually, he is working for a triad-connected businessman about to build a vast complex in Central Shanghai evoking the "glitter and glamour" of the '30s. But when former Red Guard, novelist Yin Lige is murdered, he must return to duty to apprehend the culprit.
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Yin had been a Shanghai College graduate, class of 1964.
Because of the enthusiasm she displayed in student political activities, she had been admitted to the Party and, after graduation, assigned a job as a political instructor at the college. Instead of teaching classes, she gave political talks to students. It was then considered a promising assignment; she might rise quickly as a Party official working with intellectuals who forever needed to be reformed ideologically.
When the Cultural Revolution broke out, like other young people she joined a Red Guard organization, following Chairman Mao's call to sweep away everything old and rotten. She threw herself into criticism of counterrevolutionary or revisionist "monsters," and emerged as a leading member of the College Revolutionary Committee. Powerful in this new position, she pledged herself to carry on "the continuous revolution under the proletarian dictatorship." Little did she suspect that she herself was soon to become a target of the continuous revolution.
Toward the end of the sixties, with his former political rivals out of the way, Chairman Mao found that the rebellious Red Guards were blocking the consolidation of his power. So those Red Guards, much to their bewilderment, found themselves in trouble. Yin, too, was criticized and removed from her position on the College Revolutionary Committee. She was sent to a cadre school in the countryside, a new institution invented by Chairman Mao on an early May morning, after which May 7th Cadre Schools appeared throughout the country. For Mao, one of their purposes was to keep politically unreliable elements under control or, at least, out of the way.
The cadre students consisted of two main groups. The first was composed of ex-Party cadres. With their positions now filled by the even more left-wing Maoists, they had to be contained somewhere. The other was made up of intellectuals, such as university professors, writers, and artists, who were included in the cadre rank system. The cadre students were supposed to reform themselves through hard labor in the fields and group political studies.
Yin, a college instructor, and also a Party cadre for a short while, fit into both categories. In the cadre school, she became the head of a group, and there Yin and Yang met for the first time.
Yang, much older than Yin, had been a professor at East China University. He had been in the United States and had returned in the early fifties, but soon he was put on the "use under control" list, labeled a Rightist in the mid-fifties, and a "black monster" in the sixties.
Yin and Yang fell in love despite their age difference, despite the "revolutionary times," despite the warnings of the cadre school authorities. Because of their untimely affair, they suffered persecution. Yang died not too long afterward.
After the Cultural Revolution, Yin returned to her college, and wrote Death of a Chinese Professor, which was published by Shanghais Literature Publishing House. Although described as a novel, it was largely autobiographical. Initially, as there was nothing really new or unusually tragic in the book, it failed to sell. So many people had died in those years. And some people did not think it was up to her-as an ex-Red Guard-to denounce the Cultural Revolution. It was not until it was translated into English by an exchange scholar at the college that it attracted government attention.
Officially, there was nothing wrong with denouncing the Cultural Revolution. The People's Daily did so, too. It had been, as the People's Daily declared, a mistake by Chairman Mao, who had meant well. The atrocities committed were like a national skeleton in the closet.
To be aware of the skeleton, at home, was one thing, but it was quite another matter to drag it out for Westerners to see. So Party critics labeled her a "dissident," which worked like a magical word. The novel was then seen to be a deliberate attack on the Party authorities. The book was secretly banned. To discredit her, what she had done as a Red Guard was "uncovered" in reviews and reminiscences. It was a battle she could not win, and she fell silent.
But all that had happened several years earlier. Her novel, filled with too many specific details, did not attract a large audience abroad. Nor had she produced anything else, except for a collection of Yang's poetry she had earlier helped edit. Then she was selected for membership in the Chinese Writers' Association, which was interpreted as a sign of the government's relenting. Last year, she had been allowed to visit Hong Kong as a novelist. She did not say or do anything too radical there, according to the files.

Ui chao, cái cuốn Khi Đỏ là Đen thì cũng rất ư là tuyệt cú mèo, và cũng vẫn nằm trong cái dòng di sản của Cách Mạng Văn Hoá Tẫu. Trong cuốn trước mà Gấu đã đọc trong khi đi giang hồ vặt đồng thời ghé nhà ở Xứ Phật, thì là 1 em xung phong đi thực tế, về nhà quê tam cùng cùng bần cố nông, bị ngay ông Trùm VC làng đè ra hiếp, bắt phải làm vợ anh ta.
Chắc anh này là hậu duệ của Chí Phèo, đứa con lò gạch ngày nào, nhờ ơn Cách Mạng Mùa Thu mà nên [‘lên’, cũng được] Trùm.
Cô gái cũng ngang bướng, nhất quyết không trở lại cái thiên đường tuổi mới lớn đam mê cách mạng ngày nào ở thành phố, và sau cùng được cứu vớt nhờ mối tình của 1 anh bạn cùng học, khi đó bị qui thành phần con cái địa chủ, mà, với anh này, ngày đó, em quả đúng là thánh nữ, chỉ dám đứng xa mà chiêm ngưỡng, đến gần thì đi tù!

Cuốn này, GNV phải mua trên net, bằng cái gift card, Noel năm ngoái, của 1 độc giả TV tặng.
Tks.
Take Care. NQT

Tiểu thuyết đầu tay, ăn giải, còn được báo Phố Tường coi là 1 trong 5 cuốn “top”, tiểu thuyết chính trị, của mọi thời! (1)
Lọt vô 1 trong 5, còn cuốn Đêm Giữa Ban Ngày, của VTH, ấy chết, xin lỗi, của Koestler!