English Audiobook By Wang Gang cover art

English

A Novel

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English

By: Wang Gang
Narrated by: Michael Sun Lee
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About this listen

In the tradition of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Wang Gang's English is a captivating coming-of-age novel about the power of language to launch a journey of self-discovery. When a new teacher - a tall, elegantly dressed man from Shanghai carrying an English dictionary under his arm - comes to Urumqi, the capital of China's far west region of Xinjiang, 12-year-old Love Liu turns away from Chairman Mao's little red book and toward the teacher's big blue book for answers to his most pressing questions about love and life. But as a whole new world begins to open up for him, Love Liu must face a test more challenging than any he'll take in the classroom.

©2009 Wang Gang (P)2009 Penguin
Fiction Literary Fiction
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Critic reviews

"I loved this book and can't stop talking about it...Transcendent." (Carolyn See, The Washington Post)

"Equally tender and searing... More than any other book I've read about Communist China. English conveys a sense of the time and place with clarity, authenticity and compassion." (Tiffany Lee-Youngren, The San Diego Union-Tribune)

"Deftly explores the politics of language during those treacherous times." (Travel + Leisure)

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One of my least favorite books

I was reading this book for an English class and decided an audiobook would be easier. I wouldn’t have read this book had it not been for a college course.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Unfortunate reading, annoying self-narration

Everything in the story line revolves around the viewpoint of Love Liu, a particularly self-obsessed teenage boy, perhaps an unnecessarily redundant description. Set against the background of the cultural revolution, this coming-of-age story keeps the cultural revolution way too far in the background to inform the listeners. The immensity of the cruel and erratic politics of the time are merely hinted at in the novel, but explicated in the afterword (should have been the "Forward."). Love Liu does not seem to register anyone else's reality as having any validity, and as a result creates catastrophic problems for his parents, best friends, teachers, and himself. Themes and events are introduced and then dropped, leaving enough loose ends to be frustrating and dissatisfying. The ending was limp and bathetic.

I love books by Chinese authors and nonfiction about China and was looking forward to this. Alas, thumbs down.

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