The Peking Opera Reform

Description

‘I had seen so many men celebrated and then disgraced, and so many men disgraced and then rehabilitated, that for a long time I kept the hope of someday being held worthy of the history of our country. The wheel had turned, and would turn. Undoubtedly, I would not be there to witness it. I recited to myself the words that men condemned to die defiantly utter on the scaffold: “In twenty years, I shall be a handsome young man again, one of the brave…”‘ In this enigmatic novella, one hears of the life of a litterateur before, during, and after the Great Revolution. The Peking Opera Reform was awarded Prix Decembre in 2013. This work is translated from the French, La reforme de l’opera de Pekin (Payot & Rivages, Paris, 2013).