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A review by saraxuherondale
Rečnik mesta Maćao by Han Shaogong
funny
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
It's almost 1AM (12:56 to be precise) July 12th, year 2023. On this very fine night, I have finally done something I should've done months before, finally finished this book. During the last 100 pages I was really thinking about giving it 4 stars for all these months I've been dragging this book but in the end I just couldn't do it. It's a phenomenal book, a fantastic Serbian translation (bravo Zoki), and I just couldn't bring myself to lower the rating.
This book is something I would have never picked up on my own, solely because the title has word "dictionary" in it and idk about you but that does not sound like a fun time to me. Turns out, after getting through the first few boring words (geography related) I started to get really invested. The writing of this book is actually insane, I can't believe someone is able not only to write a novel in which the language itself is a main character, but also freaking translate it into another language?? I'm very pleased I decided to start reading this book right before I've heard the author himself talk about it (back in October), but I'm also extremely happy that I was familiar enough with Chinese history to understand where these characters were coming from and what was happening around them at the time. That way you can fully get inside Han Shaogong's brain and understand his thoughts and feelings about the stories he's trying to tell to the readers. Also one of the things that I absolutely loved was the fact that a couple of the words Maqiao people used can also be found in my native language too! My mother read around 50 pages and we had a very nice talk about it, she was really surprised and pleased to see some language similarities.
Overall, I really really enjoyed this book, I wish I hadn't read it for almost a year but better late than never. I also think that it's a very important novel about language, generation gaps, culture, and just simply about life and how a certain time can shape people (and how quickly almost all of it could go away).
This book is something I would have never picked up on my own, solely because the title has word "dictionary" in it and idk about you but that does not sound like a fun time to me. Turns out, after getting through the first few boring words (geography related) I started to get really invested. The writing of this book is actually insane, I can't believe someone is able not only to write a novel in which the language itself is a main character, but also freaking translate it into another language?? I'm very pleased I decided to start reading this book right before I've heard the author himself talk about it (back in October), but I'm also extremely happy that I was familiar enough with Chinese history to understand where these characters were coming from and what was happening around them at the time. That way you can fully get inside Han Shaogong's brain and understand his thoughts and feelings about the stories he's trying to tell to the readers. Also one of the things that I absolutely loved was the fact that a couple of the words Maqiao people used can also be found in my native language too! My mother read around 50 pages and we had a very nice talk about it, she was really surprised and pleased to see some language similarities.
Overall, I really really enjoyed this book, I wish I hadn't read it for almost a year but better late than never. I also think that it's a very important novel about language, generation gaps, culture, and just simply about life and how a certain time can shape people (and how quickly almost all of it could go away).