THE
LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE is the latest from Jan-Philipp Sendker who may be most well-known
for his excellent international best seller, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats.
I highly recommend both books. THE LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE features
characters, Paul and Christine, whom Sendker had introduced previously in Whispering
Shadows. Paul is an ex-pat who has lived in China and Hong Kong for
decades and Christine, who fled mainland China, is his partner. Together they are
drawn into a mysterious and dangerous situation involving Christine’s family on
the mainland.
Like
Sendker’s other works, THE LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE is a beautiful commentary
on the human spirit, a reflection on impact of the Cultural Revolution, and an attempt
to educate about the influence of Chinese culture such as I Ching and astrology.
As I read, I always find much to
highlight:
“He
who knows others is clever; He who knows himself is enlightened.”
“Are
our lives the most precious possessions we have? Or is it the way our lives are
lived?”
“I’m
not cynical,” Xiao Hu objected. “I’m pragmatic. That’s a big difference. At
least in China.”
That
last quote refers to a debate about whether or not to try to seek justice for
industrial pollution. In his fiction, Sendker attempts to contrast the natural
reaction from a Western versus a Chinese perspective as his characters grapple
with a potentially corrupt and nascent system of regulations. This tension was recently illustrated in the
real world, too, in “The
Most Neglected Threat to Public Health in China is Toxic Soil” published this week in
The Economist. It
quotes the government’s 2014 national soil survey which indicated that 16.1% of
all soil and 19.4% of China’s farmland was contaminated by pollutants and metals
such as lead, cadmium and arsenic; see accompanying map for a visual
representation of that story.
I
continue to look forward to more from Sendker; other titles I have previously reviewed include:
Whispering
Shadows and A
Well-Tempered Heart. THE LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE received
a starred review from Library Journal.
