Inside, piles of books shown in the light of our torch: a company of great Western writers welcomed us with… — Dai Sijie
Inside, piles of books shown in the light of our torch: a company of great Western writers welcomed us with open arms. On top was our old friend Balzac, with five or six novels, then came Victor Hugo, Stendhal, Dumas, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Romain Rolland, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and some English writers, too: Dickens, Kipling, Emily Brontë…
We were beside ourselves. My head reeled, as if I’d had too much to drink. I took the novels out of the suitcase one by one, opened them, studied the portraits of the authors, and pass them on to Luo. Brushing them with the tips of my fingers made me feel as if my pale hands were in touch with human lives.
“It reminds me of a scene in a film,” said Luo. “You know, when a stolen suitcase turns out to be stuffed with money…”
“So, are you weeping tears of joy?” I said.
“No. All I feel is loathing.”
“Me too. Loathing for everyone who kept these books from us.”
p. 104Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same.
p. 117
We had been so unlucky. By the time we had finally learnt to read properly, there had been nothing left for us to read.
p. 54
Four-Eyes’s parents probably wanted their son to be a writer. They must have thought it would be good for him to read books, even if he had to do so in secret.
p. 55
