In this impressive and moving Andrew Kwong vividly writes about his life, from his childhood to the present time now.
Andrew was born and grew up in a time of great turmoil in China, during the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forwards invented by Mao Zedong. What was pictured as being the solution for China's prosperity, was in real life as everyone knows far from it and cruel. Íf you didn't agree with the communist party, you where being send away to a re-eduction that could take years, or worse, being exectuted.
Andrew's parents where being seen as intelectuals and therefore at a continous risk. Firstly, the local party authority see that they have a lot of rooms in their house, and that is wrong; they have to share their own house with strangers at their house from now on and hs mother gets only a small corner of her two kitchens. Then his father is being send to a re-education camp for twenty years because he keeps disagreeing and will not give in to the party. Luckily he gets free after three years because there is not enough food in the camp. At school teachers tell him if he devotes his life to the communist party and be a good red guard, and denounces his father's thoughts, life will be better for him. So he starts thinking that maybe they are right and acts like he is supposed to do by everyone around him, except his family. During the years of the cultural revolution, extreme poverty, famine, hunger and threats against his family follow, and his family makes a plan to escape. The first to escape to Macau, then a Portuguese colony,is Andrew, who is going to live with his aunt. There he steps into a new world, a world that is not so bad and threatening as was always told to him. Later on his father follows, but his mother is forbidden and not able to leave as the local authorities forbid her to leave the town, probably as a retaliaton for Andrew and Baba's forbidden leave. Later on, Andrew and his father make a move to Hong Kong, and even later on Andrew leaves for Australia where he starts his study and eventually becomes a doctor. Which is truly an golden achievement that you can only have deep respect for as a reader seen his difficult circumstances.
The book is written beautifully ,altough its many sad and difficult real life moments, it makes everything very realistic, it is just written how it was for Andrew and his family. You just hope that everything will turn out and make a change for the better for Andrew and his family, and that his mother will be reunited with him and his father. I found it a very moving book that is hard to put away, I just couldn't stop reading at many late moments. It was just so gripping!
I absolutely recommend this book if you are into real life stories, and just if you want to read one of the best and real books out there!!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a comment here, but keep it nice!