The Lily Theater by Lulu Wang, translation
The Lily Theater, by Lulu Wang offers deep insight in the life of a Chinese intellectual prisoner during the cultural revolution. The book emphasizes the class system that Mao was trying to dismantle but which seems to have survived despite his efforts to raise up the peasants and suppress the intellectuals. Written from the eyes of the only child in a reeducation camp for top intellectuals, its young heroine does not seem to be able to adapt to the cruelty around her and finds herself at odds with her country's culture. The author gives us a child's view of how Mao was literally worshipped as a revolutionary deity.
