By Daily Press staff
Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the novel selected for the Santa Monica Citywide Reads program, will appear at Midnight Special Bookstore, 1318 Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica today at 7:30 p.m. The international best-selling author and filmmaker will read and discuss his work, with French translation provided. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress was an overnight sensation when it was first published in France in 2000. Since then, rights to the novel have been sold in 25 countries, and it currently appears on both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times best-selling paperback fiction lists.
Dai Sijie also wrote the screenplay and directed the film, with the same title, that was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best foreign language film.
The semi-autobiographical story tells the tale of two teenage boys who are banished to the Chinese countryside for “re-education” during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. There, the two friends discover a forbidden cache of books that forever changes their lives and that of the local tailor’s daughter. Dai Sijie was himself exiled for “re-education” between 1971 and 1974. He left China in the mid-1980’s for France, where he has lived and worked ever since.
Citywide Reads is a new program that invites everyone who lives, works, visits, or attends high school and college in Santa Monica to read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and then come together to talk about this book during April and May. Sponsored by the City of Santa Monica, the Santa Monica Public Library, the California Center for the Book, and community partners, Citywide Reads is modeled after “one book, one city” projects held in other U.S. communities and is designed to encourage appreciation for reading and book-centered discussion.
For more information and a schedule, contact Citywide Reads, Santa Monica Public Library, 1343 Sixth Street, Santa Monica or call (310) 458-8646. Or visit the Santa Monica Citywide Reads Web site www.smpl.org/cwr.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 21, 2003. Read the original PDF.