Click on image to enlarge.

CHOOSE FORMATSecure eReader (5% Bonus Rebate)Secure MobipocketSecure Microsoft ReaderSecure Adobe

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$9.95				$8.46
Micropay Rebate:	$4.48				$3.81
Cost After Rebate:	$5.47				$4.65
You Save:	45.03%				53.27%

eBook Category: Mainstream
eBook Description: These six stories by Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian transport the reader to moments where the fragility of love and life, and the haunting power of memory, are beautifully unveiled. In "The Temple," the narrator's acute and mysterious anxiety overshadows the delirious happiness of an outing with his new wife on their honeymoon. In "The Cramp," a man narrowly escapes drowning in the sea, only to find that no one even noticed his absence. In the title story, the narrator attempts to relieve his homesickness only to find that he is lost in a labyrinth of childhood memories. Everywhere in this collection are powerful psychological portraits of characters whose unarticulated hopes and fears betray the never-ending presence of the past in their present lives.

eBook Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc./HarperCollins e-books, Published: 2007
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2007

1 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT [98 KB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT [323 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More., SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT [81 KB], SECURE ADOBE FORMAT [745 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [187 KB]
Secure Adobe: Printing enabled, Read-aloud DISABLED
Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN: 9780061350801
Adobe Reader ISBN: 9780061350788
Mobipocket Reader ISBN: 9780061350795
eReader ISBN: 9780061350818

"Dreamlike--the force of Gao's imagination is spellbinding."--San Jose Mercury News

We were deliriously happy: delirious with the hope, infatuation, tenderness, and warmth that go with a honeymoon. Fangfang and I had planned the trip over and over, even though we had only half a month off: ten days of wedding leave, plus one week of additional work leave. Getting married is a major event in life, and for us nothing was more important, so why not ask for some extra time? That director of mine was so miserly: anyone who went to him requesting leave had to haggle; there were never instant approvals. The two weeks I had written in my application he changed to one week, including a Sunday, and it was with reluctance that he said, "I'll expect you to be back at work by the due date."

"Of course, of course," I said. "We wouldn't be able to afford the salary deduction if we stayed any longer." It was only then that he signed his name, thereby granting us permission to go on leave.

I wasn't a bachelor anymore. I had a family. I would no longer be able to go off to restaurants with friends as soon as I got paid at the beginning of the month. I wouldn't be able to spend so recklessly that by the end of the month I wouldn't have the money to buy a pack of cigarettes and would have to go through my pockets and search the drawers for coins. But I won't go into all that. I'm saying that I--we--were very happy. In our short lives, there hadn't been much happiness. Both Fangfang and I had experienced years of hardship, and we had learned what life was all about. During those catastrophic years in this country, our families suffered through many misfortunes, and to some extent we still resented our generation's fate. But I won't go into that, either. What was important was that we could now count ourselves happy.

We had half a month's leave, and although it was only half a honeymoon, for us it couldn't have been sweeter. I am not going to go into how sweet it was. You all know about that and have experienced it yourselves, but this particular sweetness was ours alone. What I want to tell you about is the Temple of Perfect Benevolence: "perfect" as in "perfect union," and "benevolence" as in "benevolent love." But the name of the temple is not really of great importance. It was a dilapidated ruin, and certainly not a famous tourist attraction. No one knew about it other than the locals, and I suspect that even the locals who knew what it was called were few. In any case, the temple we happened to visit wasn't one where people burned incense or prayed, and if we hadn't carefully examined the stone tablet with traces of writing in the drain of the water pump we wouldn't even have known that the temple had a name. The locals referred to it as "the big temple," but it was nothing compared with the Retreat for the Soul Temple, in Hangzhou, or the Jade Cloud Temple, in Beijing. Situated on a hill beyond the town, it was little more than an old two-story building with flying eaves and the remnants of a stone gate in front of it. The courtyard walls had collapsed. The bricks of the outer wall had been carried off by peasants to build their houses or construct pens for their pigs, and only a circle of unfired bricks remained, overgrown with weeds.

However, from a distance, from the small street of the county town, the glazed yellow tiles sparkling in the sunlight caught our eyes. We had come to this town quite by accident. Our train was still at the platform after the announced departure time, probably waiting for an express that was behind schedule to pass through. The chaotic scramble of passengers getting on and off had settled and, apart from the conductors chatting at...