From Age to Page: Glimpse into Historical Reality Through Fiction
Asian literature gives us insight into the tumultuous journeys that have shaped the peoples of this continent over history
CHINA
Lust, Caution and Other Stories is a translated collection of short stories by Zhang Ailing. The titular story is based on real-life events of socialite spy Zheng Pingru during the Second Sino-Japanese War, where she seduced the chief of security of the Japanese puppet regime to assassinate him. Zhang’s collection of tales exposes the underlying tensions of gender roles in romance during pre-communist China – a time in the country’s history where love was tainted or challenged by politics and uncertainty.
The family is a central idea to Chinese culture and values, and it is a major theme in most works of Chinese literature.
The classic work of Ba Jin (or Pa Chin), The Family, tells of an affluent family in Sichuan and focuses on three brothers who
choose their paths differently in response to problematic expectations and family obligations of the older generation. While Ba Jin’s novel was written before the Cultural Revolution, its counterpart, The Chilli Bean Paste Clan, also set in Sichuan, features affluent family politics of the 21st Century. In both eras, we see the running theme of internal persecution of the prosperous.
The Last Quarter of the Moon, a translated work by Chi Zijian, features a woman of a mountain tribe, the Evenki. Now 90, she contemplates how the progress of civilisation is defined by faith, fate and forces of nature and faces the sad possibility that development could mean the inevitable eradication of tradition.
THE MIDDLE EAST
“If you are a writer from Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, you don’t have the luxury of being apolitical. You can’t say, ‘That’s politics. I’m just doing my work.” – Elif Shafak Rife with political, religious, and military warfare, the literature of the Middle East captures and re-expresses real experiences of extreme oppression. The existence of published works by female writers of the Middle East is a rebellion in itself, given the vow of submission and silence in a patriarchal society. My Feudal Lord, a novel by Tehmina Durrani from Pakistan, could be argued to be the most bold and defiant piece of Middle Eastern literature. Through this autobiography, Durrani exposes the domestic crimes of renowned politician Gulam Mustafa Khar, her husband. Elif Shafak, having grown up in Turkey and lived in the West, reflects the two worlds of East and West in her writing. A recurring theme in her novels is the search for truth and identity. The Bastard of Istanbul delves into a teenage girl’s search for her identity as she uncovers shocking connections she has with a distant relative that traces back to the Armenian genocide. Three Daughters of Eve traces the journey of Peri, an Oxford University student, in her search for religious truth. She ponders over memories of discussions she had with two other students about morality and God, and arrives at the question if the god that man fights over is man’s own construct after all. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist also discusses the issue of religion but in a subtly confrontational manner. The whole novel is written in second person, addressing the reader as a dinner guest from the West. Through one dinner conversation, the narrator calls us out on our Islamophobia in an extremely civilised and considerate manner, with undertones of mockery and insult. His third novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, also employs the second-person voice as a satire of a selfhelp book, but also invites us to personally experience the overrated transformation from poverty to riches.
INDIA
Chi Zijian’s novel features a woman clinging onto her identity and watching her whole tribe abandon her in seeking a better life. In India, the opposite happens for the same reason. Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger follows a boy who abandons and sacrifices his family to break free and establish his own identity and dreams in a globalised world. The protagonist works his way out of poverty into business and wealth, and during the course of his journey, he struggles to find contentment and value as he navigates two dimensions: deprivation – where his family is trapped in the lowest rungs of the caste system and fights to earn the basic right to live through servanthood, and luxury – where he get dazzled by success and excess, ultimately blinded by politics and greed. Similarly, Anita Desai’s novel, The Inheritance of Loss, explores tensions between the two worlds of traditional, rural life, and modern, westernised ideas. It tells of a colonialised country’s gain of riches and a new way of life, and its loss of identity, family, and traditional values. ag
“The existence of published works by female writers of the Middle East is a rebellion in itself, given the vow of submission and silence in a patriarchal society.”