Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is anything but the typical American classic.Written by Dai Sijie, a survivor of China's infamous Cultural Revolution, thenovel is about two boys who are sent to a re-mote mountain village forre-education. The boys struggle against the slim odds of returning to the cityand the physical pains of manual labor they are forced to endure. In theirsuffering, however, there are bright spots. When they meet and befriend a young,uneducated seamstress from the mountains, the story begins to take off.

Their discovery of Balzac in a forbidden stash of Western classicstranslated to Chinese, greatly influences the tone of the novel. The unique styleof Sijie's Chinese-influenced writing makes for an interesting break fromAmerican symbolism and often overdone plots.