The King of Trees: Three Novellas: The King of Trees, The King of Chess, The King of Children

Having been a tournament chess player circa 1964-1997, I also collect and read chess novels. The King of Chess is one of the best. The fact it's about Chinese Chess is no distraction from the story, and the many correspondences with the Western chess scene should fascinate Western chess players, which also gaining a perspective re the Chinese Cultural Revolution that is occurring during the times of the novels.

Good quality.

Great historical content

Although we rarely think of the Cultural Revolution given China's recent free-market miracle, when we do, the story goes something like this: the Cultural Revolution was a monster created by Mao Zedong, in which intellectuals were persecuted, scientists imprisoned, and families torn apart in the name of class struggle. No doubt. The King of Trees is about what else happened, three stories about the urban Educated Youth sent into the countryside to experience peasant life firsthand. Built around intricate first-person narration, the stories make it clear that the forced exile also created an exhilarating commraderie built around life's small pleasures. As a larger narrative, the stories move from defeat/resignation to knowledge/accomplishment to power/political action. Almost undetectable, all of the stories contain a particular moment in which characters see through the veil of the revolutionary present to something that preceded it. Ah Chen marks this moment with a sigh. There are sighs by individuals, by two people in silent agreement, and even by entire crowds. Representing the choice to exhale rather than look away, each of these sighs is a sigh of witness, of an awareness that occupies the precious space between collaboration and resistance. Noting those sighs is more than remaining faithful to the idea of witness; it is an act of representation that moves witness into an active form, reshaping perceptions, renegotiating history, and revising the Big Story we call reality.