Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Sweet Li Jie

Sweet Li Jie

Dabydeen, David

Paperback

Historical FictionLiterary Fiction

ISBN10: 1845235916
ISBN13: 9781845235918
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press
Published: Dec 26 2024
Pages: 166
Weight: 0.44
Height: 0.60 Width: 5.30 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
When the textile merchant Jia Yun leaves Wuhan Province in China for British Guiana in around 1876, his letters to his sweetheart Li Jie, owner of the only bicycle in the province, are full of the vivid characters he meets, like his Afro-Guyanese guide, Harris (with his esoteric theories), and Indian Coolie Gurr (with his instinctive feeling for what a humane society should be like). They, like Jia Yun, are busy remaking themselves in the post slavery world of Demerara as it is changed by Indian, Chinese and Portuguese indentured immigration. But is Sweet Li Jie the person Jia Yun imagines her to be? She is the receiver of other kinds of stories in her Wuhan village. It is about to be engulfed by armed chaos, provoked not least by the second British opium war on China, bringing feudal society to its end. There is landlord Wang Changling, still writing epic narratives that hide from him his true nature and the reality he now inhabits. And there is his loyal/disloyal servant Baoyu with his shattered body and endlessly inventive stories of love, circus life, cruelty, dreaming and memory, wondering how he might best serve those even worse off than him.

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Dabydeen, David

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Literary Fiction

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