Shan SaReseñas

I began reading this book believing it to be one thing (about a young Chinese girl who plays the ancient game of 'go') and then finding out it was something else entirely. The edition I have doesn't have a description on the back, just reviews of the book and I had honestly bought it knowing nothing about the author or book. It was at the bookstore, it sounded intriguing, so I bought it. I shelved it at some point and only recently brought it back out again.

The book is narrated by two people in alternating chapters--a young girl in Manchuria during the Japanese invasion of her country and the other is a young soldier in the invading army. The chapters are short--barely 3 pages in most cases--and written in a simply elegant way as to make me envy it. The novel reads almost like a poem at times, reminding me of the Japanese poetic verse of 'tanka' (Tanka are 31-syllable poems that have been the most popular form of poetry in Japan for at least 1300 years. As a form of poetry, tanka is older than haiku, and tanka poems evoke a moment or mark an occasion with concision and musicality.) but extended.

There is a brutal reality to both of their lives, rising tensions and political hostilities that can't be ignored. When they play though, when they are facing each other across the Go board and match wits and strategies, there is nothing else in world except the need to out-maneuver the other.

The book is translated into English, so there are occasional translator notes strewn throughout to explain why certain phrases/words were kept intact, but there are also historical annotations made when an event or person is mentioned. Especially when the soldier is narrating. Sometimes I appreciated them, but other times I was just annoyed because in the beginning some of the explanations take up a third of the page.

A reviewer commented that the romance between both is rather Romeo/Juliet like. I suppose if I had to describe it that would be accurate enough. Certainly there's the same sort of urgent secrecy to their love, but when one is dissatisfied with life and the other is doubting the very foundations of their life, it only seems logical they would be drawn together.

Very interesting, enjoyable book about the Japanese invasion of China in the 30s. Told in alternative perspectives of a young girl who is a masterful Go player and a Japanese solider. The writing has many lovely phrases and images.

One of those books that's very hard to rate. At times I was loving it and completely engaged. At other times... pretty bored. Regardless, this is a fascinating topic. I really enjoyed learning about the woman and the time period. It certainly piqued my interest in this historical period.

I wanted to like this book...I mean...how could I not when it starts like this:

“In the Square of a Thousand Winds the frost-covered players look like snowmen. White vapor billows from their mouths and noses, and icicles growing along the underside of their fur hats point sharply downwards. The sky is pearly and the crimson sun is sinking, dying. Where does the sun go to die?"

But it just took too much effort to like the characters.

This novel is difficult to describe - narrated by the Empress herself (the only female Emperor of China ever), it covers her entire life from before birth to after death. The imperial court of China, centuries ago, was a place filled with intrigue, constant plots to usurp the ruler, extreme violence and sexual activity, and excesses of just about everything. Family, servants, concubines, and friends who happened to be on the wrong side of the coup would be banished, ordered to hang themselves, or be murdered. It's a fascinating book, but the style of writing by the author is somewhat odd and not totally engaging. Still, I finished the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in that time period.

"The Girl Who Played Go" by Shan Sa has many wonderful qualities. Unfortunately, it suffers from characters characters who are not believable, or stereotypes.

The book reads very quickly. There are 92 chapters, each one to three pages long. This is a plus. Despite the difficult material - the book takes places during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria - it is brisk. Sa clearly has points to make and she spends no time making them. In addition, the translation from the French by Adriana Hunter seems to be very good.

The book is written from two alternating perspectives. Odd-numbered chapters are written from the point of view of a 16-year-old girl from an aristocratic family. She is a preternatural go champion in a small city. She does not act like a 16-year-old. She attends fancy dancing parties and plays go with men young and old in the park. One way Sa is able to keep the story moving is by having Sa explain very complicated ideas and rumors with this character's innocence. For example, she will say something like "according to newspapers, Chinese resistance fighters are fighting back."

Even-numbered chapters are written from the point of view of a Japanese soldier. The soldier is guilty of the worst abuses of the Japanese army during this time and is a horrible stereotype. He attends brothels, talks about ritual suicide, and talks about the Chinese in horrible terms. He is an automaton worried only about the Empire of Japan.

Throughout the book, the author tries to get the best of two worlds: she wants a young protagonist who is innocent but worldly. She wants a small town with jazz-age trappings. In the end, this mix of ideas just doesn't work. This makes the book and the characters not very believable.

The strongest aspect of Shan Sa's storyline is loneliness and emotional isolation Wu Ze Tian suffers as Empress. Every day is a struggle to manage her husband (until he dies of illness), dozens of scheming Court officials, and her family members jockeying for their place in the imperial line of succession, not to mention the problems of the Tang empire itself. It is decidedly not, as they say, "good to be the king (or queen, or empress)," since much of that life is a daily battle of wits for survival accompanied by ruinous emotional barrenness.

EMPRESS is intriguing if somewhat slow-paced read. It gives a strong sense of a very significant figure in Chinese history (although it regrettably does not give the reader many contexts concerning the Tang Dynasty in Chinese history and Empress Wu Ze Tian's role therein). Still, as powerful and wealthy as Wu Ze Tian was, Shan Sa conveys the definite sense that her job was at least as much a prison as it was a palace. That alone is a fascinating perspective. I have also encountered Su Tong's recently translated novel, MY LIFE AS EMPEROR - another excellent read for those interested in Chinese history and culture.

Alla corte imperiale della Cina del VII secolo, orfana di un mandarino, Luce riceve una raffinata educazione alla poesia, alla pittura e all'erotismo in una scuola per concubine. Tale è la sua abilità che riesce a diventare prima amante e poi moglie del giovane imperatore. Quando questi muore, Luce diventa la prima donna a sedere sul trono della Cina, che vivrà con lei un periodo di grande splendore culturale, ma al tempo stesso di turbolente tensioni sociali e intrighi di corte. Quando poi si innamora di un giovane di umili natali, le invidiose cortigiane orchestrano uno scandalo che condurrà il giovane amante alla disperazione e alla morte, mentre Luce sarà destituita dei suoi poteri.

Un peu tiré par les cheveux dans les péripéties et rencontres, un peu gavé de métaphores de poête-pouet-pouet - peut-être pas toutes les phrases, mais pas loin, ce livre reste très agréable à lire, et les personnages intéressants à suivre - je suppose que le "je" y aide, même si l'auteur "triche" un peu parfois, laissant penser que les narrateurs sont comme des livres ouverts (si j'ose dire) pour le lecteur, pour finalement nous révéler des actes et pensées quand même un peu importants pour le récit.
Mais je pardonne, car vraiment j'ai apprécié lire ce récit à deux voix, au rythme maîtrisé, aux enchaînements qui fonctionnent très bien, à l'ambiance balançant entre la mélancolie et la franche déprime, qui plus est dans un contexte historique que je ne conaissais que très peu, et même si ce n'est pas un roman historique, ça éclaire un peu.

All in all a good book, very descriptive which I normally enjoy...but this was a bit extreme. I did enjoy learning about the culture though. Fascinating.

In a small town in Manchuria in the 1930s, a 16-year-old girl is more concerned with her daily game of go and her fledgling romantic relationship with a dissident student, than she is with the potential for war with Japan. She is a master at the game, surprising for one so young (and a girl, no less). One day a stranger challenges her. Their game continues for days; they rarely speak, never introduce themselves, and she does not know that he is a Japanese soldier in disguise.

The novel is told in alternating points of view, yet both are related in first person. It took me a few chapters to get into the rhythm of the work, but the author remains consistent; first the girl, then the soldier. The chapters are short and I had little trouble telling which character was narrating.

I’m glad that Shan Sa included footnotes on the Japanese and Chinese history, because my own education in this is woefully lacking. I wish I understood more about the game of go, though I do know that it is a game of strategy.

What really shines in the novel, however, is how the characters come to life. The reader witnesses the headlong rush of first love, the despair of a broken relationship, the longing for understanding and/or deeper connection, the yearning for home, the desire to break away, the realization of a misguided decision. I was engrossed in their lives, and completely stunned by the ending.

“Alone, I manipulated the pawns on the vast chess board of an empire orphaned by its master. I was nothing more than a mind, a mind contemplating the world below with chilled compassion.”

Empress traces the rise of Heavenlight, a seventh-century Chinese woman who becomes its first and only female emperor, Empress Wu Zetian. Shan Sa takes us through Heavenlight’s life, from (bizarrely enough) the womb to her death. Her parents are born noble but rule a humble household (well humble in comparison to the monstrosity of the emperor’s palace), her mother cold and distant. Her father dies when she is young and her family is ill-treated by his clan (she is his second wife).

Heavenlight is an unusual girl for her time – a tomboy. For her ninth birthday, she receives armour from her father, and another sends a falcon. And she attracts the attention of a general who sends her to the Emperor Eternal Ancestors’ court, and given the rank of Talented One of the fifth rank, now officially overtaking the rest of her clan.

Being the nonconformist she is, unlike the rest of the women there, interested only in cramming themselves with food (the Court liked fat women) and gossiping, Heavenlight finds refuge in books, visiting the Inner Institute of Letters where learned eunuchs gave lessons:

“Books became wings that bore me far away from the Palace. The annals of former dynasties tore me from the immobility of the present. I lived in those vanished kingdoms and I took part in plots, galloped across battlefields, and shared in the rise and fall of heroes.”

It is her less than ‘feminine’ ways, especially her skill with horses, that makes her stand out and allows her to make friends with Little Phoenix, who is the King of Jin and one of the grandsons of the Emperor (I think – the hierarchy is confusing). Heavenlight and Little Phoenix (who is three years younger) grow up together and eventually become lovers. And though not not a direct heir, through some chance of fate, Little Phoenix becomes the Emperor of China. Heavenlight’s intellect and wiles helps him maneuver his way through all the politicking and seal his power. And she eventually wrangles her way to become Empress. She is ruthless and doesn’t hesitate in delivering punishments (sometimes death) where she thinks it necessary.

Heavenlight’s story is a fascinating one. Despite being surrounded by plenty of supporting characters, she is lonely and struggles to keep her place (and that of the emperor) as all that wrangling for succession plays out.

“There was still the Tang dynasty and its vast provinces. The millions of souls in the Empire had become a huge family in which I was the embodiment of an energetic and authoritarian mother.”

Empress is a colourful historical novel. It shines with its descriptions of palace life, of life in the Tang Dynasty.

“The Side Court was a kingdom within the Empire, a painted box inside a golden trunk; it was a labyrinth of tiny rooms separated by walls of adobe clay, bamboo hedges, and narrow passageways. Official pavilions, little gardens, tunnels of wisteria, and countless bedrooms were linked by long covered galleries. Thousands of women came and went with a rustling of sleeves and a murmuring of fans, without ever exposing themselves to the sun or the rain. Imperial hierarchy was scrupulously respected despite the confines of that overpopulated world. The further down someone was on the social scale, the smaller her room, the simpler the decor, and the more modest the furniture. The slave quarter was packed with ramshackle little houses, gloomy rooms, and cold beds; the women there were like insignificant stitches in a vast embroidery.

But this story does get bogged down by a little too many details of courtly life like formal ceremonies, politicking and its many side characters. A bit of a slow-paced read of the life of an unforgettable historical figure.

La joueuse de go is an historical novel, set in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation in the 1930s, although it obviously also draws obliquely on the author's experience as a young woman growing up in Beijing around the time of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The book uses the "alternating chapters" structure, with the odd-numbered chapters (the black moves) being given to a sixteen-year-old Chinese girl, and the even ones (the white moves) to a lieutenant in the Japanese army of occupation. As we would expect, the two meet over a go board, but this only happens about halfway through the book, and even then they scarcely talk apart from the few phrases they need to exchange in the course of the game. By then the author has established both their characters: the girl is tough on the outside, but very much an adolescent, more in love with the idea of growing up than with the young radicals who draw her into the fringes of the communist underground; the officer is a creature of acute, if rather conservative, aesthetic sensibilities, following a career that involves dealing out violence and death (and frequenting prostitutes) because of his sense of duty to his family and his emperor, but obviously - as he dimly starts to realise himself - someone who would have been far happier as a poet or a watercolorist. We know this isn't going to end well, but it's a great pleasure to watch the elegant way in which Shan Sa manoeuvres her two narrators around within the frameworks of their respective cultures to get them to the point where she wants them.

Basically it's Romeo and Juliet with lashings of what we used to call "oriental subtlety", so you probably shouldn't take it too seriously, but there's a great deal to enjoy in the style and execution, which are for the most part absolutely spot on.

Fun fact: like Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado, this book is claimed to have been inspired by a chance encounter with an antique Japanese sword in a market. ("Un sabre japonais était exposé. On m'a dit qu'il datait du XVIIe siècle. Personne ne s'attendait à ce que je le dégaine. J'ai tiré cette lame incandescente et tout d'un coup, j'avais l'impression de tenir la mort entre mes mains...")

Un roman qui plonge son lecteur dans la Chine de 1937, à la veille de la guerre sino-japonaise ; d'une part la Chine de Tchang Kaï-chek, du parti nationaliste, et le parti communiste chinois, qui s'unissent pour résister, unis, contre l'agresseur. Ce pan de l'histoire est perçu à travers la vie quotidienne d'une lycéenne de 16 ans, qui joue au go sur la place des Mille Vents, qui bat tous ses adversaires, et qui tombe par ailleurs amoureuse de 2 jeunes gens impliqués dans la résistance contre les Japonais, Min et Jing. Ivre de liberté, elle va vivre fiévreusement son amour pour Min, tout en étant également sous le charme de Jing.
Arrive un nouvel adversaire au jeu de go, dont elle ignore tout. C'est en fait un officier japonais habillé à la manière chinoise, et leur partie qui se déroule sur plusieurs jours, est le miroir de ce conflit entre ces deux pays qui s'affrontent.
Construit sur un rythme de chapitres courts qui alternent entre la narration de la jeune chinoise et celle de l'officier japonais, Sa Shan nous permet par ce beau roman de comprendre un peu mieux se qui se trame entre ces deux peuples, et d'entrer dans la psychologie profonde des deux personnages principaux.½

The ‘great man theory’ of history is out of fashion, and I don’t know how often historical fiction, either, sets out to portray greatness – whatever that is – in the political sphere. In this book I found myself convinced I was in the presence of greatness, a person I want to call great, and to add to that uncommon experience, she’s a woman.

If any of that sounds easy, I don’t think it is. At a point in this book it dawned upon me that in historical fiction, I haven’t met a great woman before – at least in the world of political leadership and statecraft. That may be down to the hf I read, or not. I avoid hf with titles like Empress, Princess, Queen, Consort or Concubine, because I can’t live in the women’s quarters for fun: therefore I don’t know what’s inside those novels, but I do know that this novel – which I nearly didn’t read on title – bulldozed those prejudices of mine, in seconds flat. In here I found quite an awesome human being. And I thought, it isn’t only that the historical subjects are rare (great stateswomen), but in order to create them on the page, you must have to rigorously do your thinking behind your writing. I sensed a rigour of thought behind the presentation of this woman.

From early on Heavenlight (Wu Zetian) gives the impression that her abilities swamp those around her, and moreover, she has a confidence in this. When, later in life, she finds herself more effective in worldly affairs than her emperor husband, she steps up to the job without… cognitive dissonance. She’s never been a hanger-on of others (who happen to be men). This mentality must have been necessary for a woman who makes herself Emperor of China.

As I understand, Wu Zetian was hopelessly traduced and trashed in the historical sources, so that we can’t expect to recover the ‘truth’ about her. What Shan Sa has chosen to do is salvage her with possible interpretations – possible, and positive. The resultant portrait may or may not resemble the historical person, but again I’ll say, is possible, and even just for that is a useful exercise. For myself, in future, I’m going to have a hard time picturing Wu Zetian any other way than the Heavenlight of this novel.

On style. This is told in intense first person; it’s about her and from her; her feelings for others are conveyed, but not so much the others’ existence in themselves. No doubt our subjectivities are as self-centred as this – it isn’t that she struck me as a selfish person. There is a brevity (one large life in 300 pages): in the middle parts I felt this a skimming-over, but in the late parts this brevity worked as an extraction of the essential or the right lines (the author’s a painter). Maybe that was me, getting used to the style. It had enough exclamation marks to play toy soldiers with... I don’t like to complain of such trivialities in translations from the French, but they got hard to ignore. At times I was plunged into the emotional life of this novel; at other times it failed to engage me. Again, I don’t whether that’s me, and I’ll see what happens next time I read this.

I mentioned that I can’t stand to live in the women’s quarters: here the Inner Palace is a prison and an insane asylum, and that meant I was fine. These women are overwrought, but they are seen to be made insane. It’s fair enough.

I’d note the parallels of youth and age in her sex life. As a young girl she suffers an obsession for one of the emperor’s older wives; when she herself is fifty she is once again infatuated with a fourteen-year-old girl. For years she serves as emperor’s wife; in her widowhood she acquires a young man, and he is kept, for her uses, in such a turned-upside-down way, equivalent to how the emperor treated his concubines… that I think Shan Sa is interested in exploring these matters.

I’m a fan of the use of translated names. Zetian is Heavenlight, and so we notice the light themes that coalesce about her. Children of hers are named Splendor, Future, Miracle. Lucky they are, because she can have little to do with her children, and these names were far more memorable for me than, in my ignorance, the Chinese. It exploits the ironies: Wisdom? uh-uh. Intelligence? a distinct lack of. It adds to the atmosphere and the intelligibility of the world, it tells us about their values. The city Chang’an is Long Peace. Our experience is more real when we know what the names mean, as, obviously, the novel’s inhabitants know.

The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa is deceptively simple book about two people - a Chinese girl in Manchuria who excels at the game of go and a Japanese officer sent to Manchuria en route to the frontline in China, and how their lives cross and are changed.

Just as in a game of go, the two players do not interact much as first; Shan Sa deftly and poetically portrays the two characters individual lives. As time goes on, the two draw inexorably closer and moves are played faster, as the climax of the game and of the story rapidly approaches. From the book's halfway point, the two plots become more and more intertwined and what began as a light-hearted game soon becomes cruel and tragic.

Shan Sa's writing style is simple yet elegant and she manages to portray the lives of both Japanese and Chinese in Manchuria well. Using the game of go as a metaphor, she is able to explore the choices people make in life and the effects they have: Go imitates life, life imitates go.

La pecca di questo romanzo è, secondo me, il linguaggio, troppo freddo e distaccato, nonostante i narratori che raccontano i fatti in prima persona. Peccato!

Lu il y a longtemps... Souvenir d'un livre extraordinaire, 4 récits d'une femme, à 4 époques très éloignées, et pourtant c'est la même femme, ses tourments, ses choix, ses bonheurs, sa place dans la société, liberté, destin, fatalité,... A relire un de ces jours.

Elle nous raconte son histoire en commençant depuis le ventre de sa mère. Enfant sauvage et libre, elle vivra mille vies, de la misère au sommet du pouvoir de cet empire de Chine du 7ème siècle. Ce récit à la première personne montre comment un caractère authentique et fier motive, justifie ses choix et ses actes à ses propres yeux, dans des circonstances de toute puissance comme d'ultime indigence.
Un bon livre, avec des passages extraordinaires, mais auquel j'ai tout de même trouvé quelques longueurs... comparé aux véritables bijoux que sont Les 4 vies du saule ou La joueuse de go !

This played so fast and loose with history I'm not sure why the author didn't just write a fantasy novel while she was at it. Of course then she wouldn't have had the resonances of Alexander the Great, but... Alestria was so very ahistorical as the Amazonian warrior queen whose tribe descended from the Siberian steppe and who falls in love with Alexander and consents to become (as "Roxana" for political purposes and a brittle veneer of historicity) his trophy wife.

There were some interesting parallels, and alliteration very almost as theme; but the story doesn't serve history well.

I don't really know how to describe this book. Its good in a sense that you really get a feeling of the imperial court of China, probably an inside look that few get.

However with all the descriptions it is easy to get lost. The titles go on forever and ever, Empress this, Emperor that, Royal this Royal that...um ok I get it they love long titles and everything.

Oh well, I don't really know what else to say.

Hm, ich dachte, es ginge in diesem Roman um einen dramatischen Ausschnitt der japanisch-chinesischen Geschichte, hoffte, ein wenig darüber zu lernen und freute mich auf eine Erzählung im Rhythmus und Sog eines großen Spiels, wie z.B. in Zweigs Schachnovelle. Statt dessen Teenager-Schwulst gepaart mit traditionellen Sex-Klischees mit einer würzigen Prise Asien-Exotik. Wers mag, meins wars nicht...

I want to inhabit a world built of Shan Sa’s dreamy metaphors—A woman is bathing in thermal springs, her body glistening under the water where it writhes and twists like a slender leaf, or The moon looks like a line of chalk drawn on the sky. Even her name (a pen name) has the alluring meaning: rustle of the wind in the mountains.

The author, born in Beijing, began writing poetry at age 6 and received her first national poetry award at 12. In her 20s she moved to Paris to study philosophy and apprentice with a Swiss painter, and began writing novels in French. Her multi-cultural artistic sensibility, with the help of an outstanding English translator, shines through in every sentence on the page.

The novel is the parallel stories of a 15-year-old girl in Japanese-occupied Manchuria and a Japanese officer, in 1934, told through 92 short, alternating first-person chapters. The protagonists meet daily in a public park to play the game of Go, though they rarely speak and don’t know each other’s name or history. Against the common backdrop of the Japanese invasion of China, the stories of her sexual coming of age and his inner struggle between duty and desire, only converge near the end.

Her writing reads like prose poetry, whittled down to the bare minimum, each word thoughtful and deliberate, in sentences which burst with sensuous energy. She portrays the game of Go, played on a large checkerboard with smooth round black and white stones:

The chequered board is a violent sea with white and black waves chasing and crashing into each other. Towards the four shores they draw back, spin around and head for the skies. But where they mingle, they clash and come together in a fierce embrace.

The sight of a bombarded building in which the girl’s lover has died is made all the more horrible by showing her first glimpse in a single terse sentence:

The windows with their shattered panes are dark as the mouths of animal lairs.

I feel like framing the sentence in which the Japanese soldier describes the very first smile he receives from the girl:

Her mouth opens with all the irresistible power of a grenade exploding.

Too many similes and metaphors packed into a novel can overwhelm and detract from the story, but Shan Sa doesn’t do this. Although there are a lot of them, each one teems with emotion and fits perfectly within the context. Plus they’re so gorgeous I keep looking forward to the next one.

I remain a not-so-secret admirer, in love with her language.

I'm giving up on this one 100 pages in. I have an old ARC of this book (obviously old - the book was published in 2003) and so I expect some typos and the like. But there have been a noticeable number of times the wrong word was used ("peel of laughter," for example) and it's just driven me crazy. The writing is not nearly good enough to make up for the editing problems. Repetition of words in a sentence ("all of them are all like beasts of burden....") and other mistakes just pull me right out of the story.

It's a shame because I'm sure the story is very interesting, but the way its told here (even aside from the mistakes) just isn't compelling enough to keep me reading.

drawn by the exotic magic of the East, faszinated by the daily and forced traditions at the court in China 600-700A.D. Almost a family drama, a soap opera, an epic tale. This book had everything in it. However, the last third became a bit redundant. Still, I like it because this time in China was unknown to me and I liked reading about the court affairs. Yes, everbody with everybody. no regards of the gender, but then again, it made an interesting read. Will look for the author's other book.