“Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch”
by Dai Sijie
Published: June 2006
ISBN: 9781400077144

(Updated: May 24, 2007.)

From the Publisher…

Having enchanted readers on two continents with Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie now produces a rapturous and uproarious collision of East and West, a novel about the dream of love and the love of dreams. Fresh from 11 years in Paris studying Freud, bookish Mr. Muo returns to China to spread the gospel of psychoanalysis. His secret purpose is to free his college sweetheart from prison. To do so he has to get on the good side of the bloodthirsty Judge Di, and to accomplish that he must provide the judge with a virgin maiden.

This may prove difficult in a China that has embraced western sexual mores along with capitalism–especially since Muo, while indisputably a romantic, is no ladies’ man. Tender, laugh-out-loud funny, and unexpectedly wise, Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch introduces a hero as endearingly inept as Inspector Clouseau and as valiant as Don Quixote.

I think I can see what the intended bits, pieces and threads were that were to be woven together in this book. I think. Maybe. Sort of. Kind of. But I found no real way into it.

Odd subjects. Strange notions. Somehow very far from the pubisher’s description. So far perhaps that without it I wouldn’t have understood what was going on.

I really found little to discover, little to share and little pleasure in this book and give it a two out of five hearts.