De achterstraten: een roman uit Xinjiang

by Perhat Tursun, Irwan Droog (Translator)

'De achterstraten' is een verbazingwekkende roman van een moderne, hedendaagse Oeigoerse auteur, Perhat Tursun. Het boek volgt een naamloze Oeigoerse man die naar de ondoordringbare Chinese stad Ürümqi komt nadat hij een tijdelijke baan heeft gevonden in een regeringskantoor. In zijn zoektocht naar een kamer, een plek om de nachten door te brengen, ontmoet hij niets dan koude blikken en afwijzing. Hij zwerft door de achterstraten, dwaalt door de eeuwige dichte mist die de stad teistert, en raakt intussen verstrikt in een interne monoloog over getallen en geuren, lust en afkeer, herinneringen en waanzin.

Perhat Tursun (1969) is een vooraanstaande Oeigoerse schrijver en denker. Hij publiceerde talloze korte verhalen en gedichten, evenals drie romans. In 2018 werd hij door de Chinese autoriteiten gearresteerd en kreeg hij naar verluidt zestien jaar gevangenisstraf. Sindsdien is er niets meer van hem vernomen.

'Door de verdwijning van de auteur zal "De achterstraten" ongetwijfeld onthaald worden als symbool van de Oeigoeren. Maar het is nog veel een uitzonderlijk boek dat opvalt door de beklemmende vertelstijl die doet denken aan de modernisten (Dostojevski, Camus, Freud). En tegelijkertijd klinkt er een unieke stem, grauw en mooi.' THE GUARDIAN

'Beeldend en desoriënterend illustreert "De achterstraten" de pijnlijke effecten van racisme en uitsluiting. Het is een vreemde, verwoestende roman, die laat zien wat het betekent om een tweederangs burger te worden in je thuisland.' THE ECONOMIST

Uit het Engels vertaald door Irwan Droog
Met een voorwoord van Darren Byler

Genres: Fiction, China, Asia, Literature, Politics, Literary Fiction, Novels

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Subtitled A Novel from Xinjiang, Perhat Tursun’s The Backstreets tells the story of an Uyghur man in the Chinese capital. Translated by Darren Byler and Anonymous, it is a most unusual book, having no chapters and narrated in the first person. Using powerful imagery, much of the tale is about the constant fog in the city as the unnamed man recounts various experiences and family incidents from his past. Surprisingly, it flows as an endless recount of the man’s life who has no place to stay and a fixation on numbers. An unfolding gem of a literary fable, which is esoteric, yet a gentle lyrical ode to a suppressed culture. The awe-inspiring imagery conveys a subtle philosophical metaphor that is easy to read, whilst challenging you for meaning and understanding. So, it’s an unlikely book but a delightful read, if not for everybody despite its five stars rating. With thanks to Columbia University Press and the author, for an uncorrected advanced reader copy for review purposes. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own and freely given.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I don’t know anyone in this strange city, so it’s impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone.”

The narrator of this novel is no carefree urban flaneur. He is a Uyghur man, an office worker with no home to go to after he leaves work one evening, who wanders the foggy, smog-ridden backstreets of Urumchi, a city in Xinjiang. He’s obsessed with the special power of numbers, and upon finding a scrap of discarded paper with numbers on it, he sets off to look for what he thinks will be a house number, perhaps even somewhere he will be able to sleep. As he wanders through the fog, his thoughts turn back to his youth in a rural village with an alcoholic, violent father, and his time as a student in Beijing. He encounters various hostile or wary figures who loom out of and disappear into the fog, and is fearful, lonely, and dehumanized. Smells and various grotty substances abound…

Not my usual fare, and I would say not an ‘enjoyable’ read but an enriching one. While there are section breaks there are no chapters, and it truly is one long dream/nightmare-like wander, filled with recurring images and disorientation. But it was very effective at conveying the narrator’s experience as he is essentially driven mad as a sane response to the alienation and discrimination he faces. It reminded somewhat in terms of tone and repetition of imagery of Ice, but it is also very much of a place and time. Some recurring sexualized imagery and brooding that reminded me also of reading Klaus Theweleit - not that the narrator is a fascist, but much preoccupation with bloodstains and the like.

Usually I prefer to read an introduction afterwards, but in this case I was glad I read the introduction by anthropologist and co-translator Darren Byler before the novel as it really helped situate and explain what I was reading. The author (and the other, anonymous co-translator) have very unfortunately both been ‘disappeared’ by the Chinese state. Read together, the introduction and the novel were an eye-opening insight into the Uyghur experience of colonization.

“The moment I walked out of the office and down the steps at the front of the building, I felt a light shiver. The weather was foul. There was still ample time until sunset, but in Urumchi, the sun never really rises. It feels like it’s always sinking into an overbearing darkness. This makes the city fade into the dimness of imagination, saddening the human spirit. I felt an unexplainable, unforgettable feeling while standing at the front of the building. I stood there looking at the city, but as I was overcome by longing and loneliness, the city gradually faded. The buildings in the distance vanished into the fog. For an instant I could see the reddish glow of the lit windows, but in the next instant they seemed to disappear. They didn’t look like lit windows, they looked instead like the spit of a man whose teeth were bleeding. Everything around me seemed to disappear, and a sudden feeling of horror came over me as if I were trapped, suspended in the air.”

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first translation of a Uyghur novel into English and for that alone is worth reading. It is by preeminent Uyghur author who is currently in prison, apparently serving a 16 year sentence, detained by the Chinese government as so many other Uyghur intellectuals have been in order to wipe out the Uyghurs and their culture, and again this is a pressing reason to read the book and support even distantly the author. But the novel transcends its political importance by giving an unprecedented literary insight into Uyghur reality, a fascinating glimpse into the Uyghur experience through the mind of an unnamed narrator who lives in a nightmare world, shrouded in the literal fog of pollution and the symbolic fog of an oppressive society. Kafka and Camus quickly spring to mind but there is nothing imitative about the writing, with Tursun creating a unique claustrophobic atmosphere as the narrator tries to make sense of an increasingly surreal existence. He arrives in Xinjiang to take up a position in a government office but it soon becomes apparent that he is not welcome. He proceeds to wander through the city trying to find a place to stay, but meets only contempt and rejection. It’s not an easy read with its stream of consciousness narration and the narrator’s obsession with numbers so the excellent introduction is vital in helping the reader navigate their way into the narrator’s mind as he makes his physical journey through the city. Displaced in his own country, he faces loneliness and isolation, the dehumanising effects of urban living, racism and prejudice, a total lack of connectivity with and alienation from others in a world where he meets only suspicion. Although firmly rooted in its time and place, the book nevertheless has a universal relevance. A powerful and disturbing read.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a stream of consciousness tale ripe with foreboding and dark and disturbing connotations.

To escape the poverty trap of village life, our protagonist has secured work at a government office in the city. However, his appointment was likely an example of positive discrimination. He is an Uyghur and is (unjustly) perceived as the lowest of low in terms of the social caste.

He ventures out, roaming the city backstreets in an attempt to find overnight accommodation and thus reveals the underbelly and ‘aroma’ of grime, prejudice, pollution, and violence. It’s almost dystopian but is probably more realistic than we would care to believe. It feels as though the citizens he encounters are devoid of humanity when confronted with his ethnicity and go out of their way to avoid him. He is met with discrimination, mistrust and rejection at every turn. His sense of loneliness and alienation is palpable. Very occasionally, we glimpse some rays of light that penetrate the smog and reappear as endearing memories.

The author of this work, Perhat Tursun, is an Uyghur who is missing and has presumably been incarcerated to be “re-educated”.

Content-wise, this is not an easy read, coupled with the fact it is Kafkaesque in its form. However,
it is an essential work of literature that highlights the plight of the Uyghurs and their dispossession.

My thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for granting this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went into this with high expectations and that was my biggest mistake. While stylistically the Backstreets is reminiscent of Dostoevsky's writing with its bleak atmosphere and the general feeling of despair permeating every line, that is about as far as the similarities go.

The Backstreets describes a truly horrific reality but somehow fails to evoke emotion or any sort of appropriate response. I was trying to understand what exactly was supposed to make me keep reading, but couldn't find a good reason. In the end, I powered through this novel because I felt like I was under some sort of moral obligation to do so due to the author's own story and its dark reality reflected in this book, but I can't say it answered my questions or gave me food for thought.

[Liviu Szoke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Din cronica apărută pe Biblioteca lui Liviu:

„Am să încep prin a spune că n-am mai citit niciodată un roman de o asemenea factură. Am mai citit povești în care realitatea se confundă cu imaginația, în care granița dintre real și ireal este foarte subțire sau chiar inexistentă, în care personajul principal pare că face o călătorie printr-un tărâm ciudat sau chiar imaginat de el, iar noi suntem doar martori, evident, asistăm, vedem lumea prin ochii lui și ne întrebăm în permanență: cât oare este real și cât este imaginar din ceea ce văd prin ochii acestui „unreliable narrator”? Ne minte? Visează? Rememorează? Inventează? Distorsionează? Exagerează? Sau doar relatează la rece și este și el la fel de neputincios ca și noi când vine vorba de-a separa imaginarul de real?

Perhat Tursun, scriitor de prim rang al culturii uigure, o populație atipică într-o mare de chinezi care i-ar vrea asimilați complet sau poate chiar să dispară cu totul – cel puțin probabil asta și-ar dori conducătorii (sau conducătorul, că nu cred că se poate vorbi de mai mulți conducători în China) -, a scris mai multe povești, iar cu el au stat de vorbă inclusiv traducătorii acestui volum, care și-au dorit enorm să-i facă povestea cunoscută și să o traducă într-o limbă de circulație internațională pentru a-i purta mai departe sfâșietorul strigăt de ajutor prin intermediul acestei alegorii despre alienare și teama de dispariție.
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„Dintr-odată, un șobolan a țâșnit glonț prin fața mea și a dispărut în gunoi. Pentru o clipă, am rămas înlemnit, dar apoi mi-am continuat drumul. Mi-a fost teamă să nu mă fi văzut cineva că m-am speriat de șobolan, așa că m-am uitat imediat peste umăr. La fel cum șobolanul fugea disperat printre gunoaie, și eu alergam disperat prin oraș. Ca și el, căutam de mâncare, iar după ce-mi umpleam burta, nu-mi doream altceva decât să dorm.”

Mai multe: https://t.ly/t8V9W

[Nocturnalux · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have heard of this book- and odds are you have not- then you will know that it is hailed as defining the Uyghur lived experience of expatriation to Han dominated cities, where a crushing urban environment of severe oppression makes of them colonial subjects. And this is entirely correct. What reviews fail to address is the deep individuality of the narrator's self and how this, in turn, impacts the novel and transcends it from being a faceless abstraction. It is in this that it becomes a true work of genius as well as highly relevant. This is both a tale that has been repeated far too many times and points to systemic oppression of an entire people as well as the unique story of one particular person whose singular love for numbers, acute sense of smell and ability to ramble both literally through apparently endless streets and his mind define him as one individual, unique and unrepeatable.

This is a young man whose name is never revealed although it is alluded to, and this novel spans the entire life of the young man in a most fragmentary and circuitous manner, linking form and content in a tight package, so that it manages to convey a vast array of impressions despite its short format.

Fog, fog, fog: real, actual, very tangible fog that has made the city of the most polluted places on Earth and also fog that obscures, distorts, bends and morphs reality, be it the malleable past, the unstable and threatening present or the dim future, where some hope can projected on but mostly as wishful thinking. While Uyghur belonging is a theme in this novel about alienation in a hostile Chinese world, where even the very tonality of Mandarin in its complexity is wielded as a weapon, this is one of those literary constructions that defies single solutions. It is not "Uyghur countryside good, Han Chinese city bad" as there is a lot in the lead's rural childhood that is nothing short of evil of the most brutalizing kind imaginable, to the point he comments at one point that he would rather die on the streets than sleep in his childhood bed again.

The bulk of the action comprises his making his way, falteringly, through the backstreets of the sprawling, illusive, deceptive city. He is looking for a place to spend the night, having nothing of his other that a drawer in the dingy office where he routinely humiliated. In this very single endeavor, that turns out to be absurdly complex for all sorts of reasons that range from the numeration system being too chaotic to follow, to the fog that does away with any sense of direction one might have, to the way vivid daydreams burst upon him and divert his attention entirely, he encounters several city dwellers. They ignore him when directly asked for directions, when they do not also insult and even attack him. Theirs- the Chinese overlords- is an attitude at bafflement at being addressed by a Uyghur- or perhaps by anyone, really, given how everyone seems so utterly disconnected and adrift- and communication breaks apart before it can even get started.

This is not merely a matter of a language barrier. As mentioned before, the intricacies of Mandarin are wielded as an actual weapon, not only by stressing its tonal complexity but also by his boss making him rewriting documents that he then picks apart because a wrong character was employed. The translation was kind enough to include these actual characters, for which I was immensely thankful; I understand the vast majority of the readership will not get how using [死] instead of [思] is nothing short of hilarious but those who do will find themselves smiling as the narrator bursts out laughing at the blunder he committed.

Because, in a sense, it was not even a blunder. Death is all around and it is as much a physical threat, threats being a recurring theme, as it is an idea. This working on a dual level of "realistic" depiction and symbolic representation full of highly thought out notions injects a kind of energy that propels the reader along. It also links to Uyghur shamanic practices that are both familiar and alien.

The sense of displacement, in itself, is already dual in the narrator's experience. He spent five years in college in Beijing, a city that stands for Han-ness itself, and that was already alienating but not as much as being a complete stranger in your very region. Beijing was "a stage", a place where he shuttled from dingy dorms to classroom to library with no interaction with its inhabitants. The Chinese are "there" but he has nothing to do with them, they have nothing to do with him. Beijing is foreign by default so it is more easily endured. But the city of Ürümchi is part of Xinjiang. If the denizens of Beijing are interchangeable to the Uyghur student population- and vice-versa- and there is not place of genuine dialogue between the two, they are not on a quest to eradicate Uyghur selfhood from the land.

Part of it might very well the passage of time as "the Uyghur problem" has become increasingly more an affront on human rights. You can chart the evolution from bad, to very bad, to even worse and chart where it is going unless something changes. The chronology of the very novel's creation bears this out, as does the fate of its author. Originally written in the early 90's, it underwent a revision in 2005-2006 and was finalized in 2015; Perhat was "disappeared" in 2018 and remains so to this day. One year prior, the anonymous co-translator suffered the same fate.

This makes The Backstreets borderline prophetic in the most terrifying way. We are now dealing with a vast system of reeducation camps, forced sterilization and a barrage of anti-Uyghur propaganda firmly steeped in "War on Terror" molds. The very worst of two worlds combined to bludgeon and entire people into submission.

If it is difficult for anyone to contemplate, the author's tackling it through his writing and ultimately by having his entire life derailed, become a desperate act of courage.

When to simply be becomes an affront, to think is sheer anathema and to share such thoughts punishable by violence. Ironically, for all the cant about "Muslim extremists", Perhat is secular and has even incurred the wrath of Uyghurs who did not take kindly to his criticism of religious mania. Why, then, was he arrested? We cannot know as none is made public. If there was a trial, it happened behind doors and was surely a kangaroo court.

We have good reason to know he was convicted to a stunning sixteen-year sentence.

Sixteen years. Sixteen years of fog, sixteen years of daily horror and sixteen years that one is very unsure whether Perhat is meant to survive.

It is a very small thing, a small, small thing but talking about this book is a means of keeping it alive. As Perhat stated, the freedom to think, to talk, is what he wanted. While we can, we should perhaps strive to be someone met beyond the fog, who will listen and acknowledge the humanity of the person before us.

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and to Columbia University Press for this eARC.

Perhat Tursun is an Uyghur author who was reportedly imprisoned in 2018 for sixteen years by the Chinese government. In his surreal, stream-of-consciousness novel, an unnamed Uyghur man wanders the foggy streets of Ürümchi, Xinjiang, one night, while looking for a place to stay. The narrative is split between memories of his childhood and village, his experiences as a student in Beijing, accounts of his days at work in this new city, and the disturbing and nightmarish encounters of this night. He bumps into hostile strangers, and wanders into a home where a woman threatens him with a cleaver. He ponders—obsesses over—the meanings of numbers. He is assailed by smells, a major theme in the novel, with horrifying odours creating an unsettling atmosphere, particularly with his vision obscured by the fog. He talks a lot about physical contact, bodies—especially those of women, and sex. He hears things, including a woman screaming, and he knows this is not real.

Even without knowledge of what has happened to the author, this is a heartbreaking account of what it’s like to be unmoored. The narrator has been subjected to childhood trauma, and uprooted through colonization. The narrative shifts, digresses, and comes back in on itself, like the fog in the novel, and one feels just as lost as the narrator. He repeats over and over that he does not know anyone in the strange city, and one feels his complete disconnection and dislocation.

This felt to me very much like reading Marechera’s House of Hunger, with a similarly seemingly unreliable narrator who has very clearly been through and is going through great trauma (also in first person narration). There will also be comparisons to that famous stream-of-consciousness novel, Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway; however, any similarity to it is only in style.

I cannot say I enjoyed this unsettling book, but I am glad I read it.

Rated: 6/10.

Read with: Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger.

[Sookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Backstreets is a stream of consciousness narrative written by a Uyghur from Urumqi, Xinjiang. The author and one of the translators of the book are currently missing. The author, Perhat Tursun was first detained and then given a long prison sentence. Details of his detention and sentencing isn't released so its unknown as to why he was targeted. Darren Byler in introduction speculates it could be because of his position as a person of influence in literary, social and cultural circles or it could be that this book in itself, published in an online forum at the end of 2013 using VPN and accessing unfiltered news from around the world. Whatever the reason might have been, the author disappeared in 2018. Along with him, a man named D.M who helped Byler with contacts and provided various resources also disappeared around the same time or just before. A.A - the co-translator of the work disappeared right after. The Uyghurs involved in writing and translating this book are currently in detention and outside world has no idea what has happened to them.

Darren Byler's long introduction to this book provides a good context to the book - by building the history of the geography starting post 9-11, rise in Islamophobia not just in China but around the world and the politics it influenced everywhere. Byler's introduction is useful in summarizing a decade long of politics, human trauma and the current situation.

In the book the narrator goes through life in his town of Urumqi. The interactions he has with people, his observation and the memories they evoke, is the book's main charm. It is not always easy to keep up with the narrator as the cultural barrier exists but its always welcome to delve more into everyday life in the city.

Thank you to Netgalley and Columbia University Press for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.

[Jifu · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)

Darren Byler’s lengthy introduction in which he introduces currently missing (and presumed imprisoned) Perhat Tursun turned out to be much appreciated. The comprehensive context on the author of “The Backstreets” honestly made me feel quite lucky to have the opportunity to read this work. Also appreciated was Byler’s discussion of the major themes explored in the work, though that admittedly wasn’t nearly as necessary. The nameless narrator’s Camus-esque sense of isolation from a distinctly Uygher perspective shone through as brightly as the sun as I accompanied him in dreamlike wanderings around Urumqi in a fog of pollution and his own thoughts and memories. Overall I found The Backstreets to be beautiful in its absurd and eerie way, with its mood and vivid setting captured masterfully from its original language thanks to the work of Byler and yet another missing and presumed imprisoned Uygher translator.

[Weiling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rescued from the fast disappearing Uyghur culture, The Backstreets tells of an average Uyghur office worker in Urumqi, who had lost his parents to alcoholic violence, encountering the banal cruelty from his Han Chinese superiors and strangers on the street. The ordinariness of normalcy suffocates, like a dense fog that muffles sounds and jams every pore used for breathing. The dominant imagery of the dense fog throughout the novel is at once a literal result of relentless urbanization and industrialization and a metaphor for the ubiquitous control imposed on every Uyghur life by the Han Chinese colonial scheme. As one of the anonymous translators recalled, the absurd surrealism of the novel spoke to the average Uyghur experience living in constant fear, alienation, and hopelessness on their ancestral land that is no longer theirs.

Banality is the extraordinary characteristic of “the normal,” the “killing abstraction” that sucks out life from both those who conform to it and those deemed the Other. One lives as if one was already dead. The killing is done in slow motion by turning every single place into a sign of expulsion and a request of annihilation, meanwhile enforcing extreme moral judgment on difference. The smiley-faced boss sitting opposite to the young protagonist denied his access to anything in the office except an empty, urn-sized drawer, the only possession the protagonist had in the entire world. Not having any idea where to find a place to sleep, the protagonist looked for clues from random numbers he saw on random pieces of papers, submitting himself to the numerical guidance that he found godly. Once in a while, he would hear an obscure sound buzzing in his head whose source he couldn’t figure out. Unable to recognize him as a harmless and helpless human being, total strangers that the heavy fog spit out and swallowed ran for their lives when approached by what they readily perceived as a walking symbol of terrorism.

A fertile land with rich geological resources, China’s western “New Frontier” — the literal translation of Xinjiang — stands in the strategic middle point of the ancient transcontinental Eurasian Silk Road. The Han Chinese's massive westward migration in the 1980s to some extent resembled the Manifest Destiny in America in the 1800s. It opened a brutal chapter of settler colonialism incentivized by the rampant expansion of free market spinning out of the country’s east coast. Yet, the recurring genocidal conflict between the agrarian Han Chinese territory and the Uyghur ancestral land of nomadic tribes traces back to as early as 200 BC, attempting Han Chinese scholars to repeat the myths of civilization versus barbarianism over time. Scholarship and public attitude based on this mythological perspective gave rise to the popular image of a territorially bounded China centering on the agrarian civilization nurtured by the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers.

Putting cart (conclusion) before the horse (history), the teleological view of the Han-Uyghur relationship lends a convenient reference to justify xenophobic ethno-nationalism, which is now aided by, and at the same time fueling, surveillance technologies. The only known translator of this novel, Darren Byler, has much scholarly insight to offer about what he calls “terror capitalism,” an exploitive economy built with the surplus value of the terrorized and unfree labor of the Uyghurs charged, without conviction, for their potential (read: nonexistent) extremist activities regardless of their religious piousness. Terror capitalism sentences all racialized Others to what Orlando Patterson called “social death”: lifelong imprisonment in terror and isolation. The lonely figure searching for a home between the backstreets of Urumqi was not just spatially isolated, exiled from any shared space, but genealogically isolated: denied connections to his own forebears and ancestral wisdom to understand his social reality and “to anchor the living present in any conscious community of memory” (Patternson, Slavery and Social Death).

The soul-crushing city life intimidates the urban residents with its “rejection of their love,” turning them into cruel and resentful creatures obsessed with hurting each other. It pervertedly and proportionately mutates “hopelessness, sadness, and listless depression” into positive energy that makes individual’s face glow. But it is the oppressed who can see through the waxy facade of the city, from bureaucracy to fake beauty, to detect sealed hollowness underneath. It is the deprived who realize the ubiquity of dehumanization in every place devoured by the greed of development. And yet not pretending to uphold false positivity is morally intolerable by the hypocritical majority, whose moral superiority is built on the enforced guilt of the racial/ethnic subaltern. Little does the majority know that their own bodies are bleeding humanity to the dehumanizing void of the pointless punishment of the oppressed each time they deny the racial/ethnic Other the re-entry to humanity.

The only thing that proves the existence of the last drop of vitality is sex. While sex may be a universal pleasure, Tursun didn’t forget to delineate the line between sexual desire as a dull perversion practiced for the purpose of reproduction and as an invigorating longing for corporeal bonding. Corporeality was the sacred gift Tursun’s protagonist saw in his neighbor’s daughter back home in rural Xinjiang whom he admired. But femininity as a politically radical ontology was not immune to being co-opted by power. The Han-supremacist women and men alike would not hesitate to wage a “people’s war against (Muslim) terrorism,” copying the United States' post-9/11 nationalist sensation. The brief sparks of humanity could not save the lovers from being separated by a fate prescribed by settler colonialism, urbanization, and the necropolitics of terror capitalism. When the protagonist's destination eventually revealed itself after all the injuries and insults, it gestured that it was time to put his own madness in its proper place already populated by his kin(d), showing him the beginning of an infinitely elongated erasure.

Toward the end, there was again the sound he heard from the inarticulate silence in his head. This time, away from the dins of the city and deep in the thickness of public amnesia, he recognized the voice, a sign of the dead resuscitated from the bleakest margin.

[Eef Pannekoeke · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2,5) Wederom denk ik dat mijn relatief lage score voor dit boek te maken heeft met de vertaling. Ik ben geen expert op het vlak van literair vertalen, maar ik denk dat ik genoeg literatuur in vertaling heb gelezen om mijn voorkeur te hebben. Het verhaal leek niet overeen te komen met het taalgebruik erover; het las alsof het letterlijk woord voor woord vertaald was, waardoor het ontzettend lastig was om me erbij te houden. Zo heeft het me enkele dagen geduurd om door een luttele 135 pagina's te geraken ://

Het verhaal zelf was interessant en daarboven ontzettend belangrijk, jammer van de vertaling. Heel eng om te beseffen dat niemand een flauw idee heeft waar deze man is.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up

This book has been on my radar for a while, and as a reader with a keen interest in contemporary China I knew this was a must-read; even without the troubling context that the author, a Uyghur poet and writer was imprisoned in 2018 in a labour camp.

I haven't read around too much about the author, but the excellent intro to this book (by co-translator Darren Byler) leads me to think that much of the content and context is at least sem-autobiographical. The protagonist moves to Beijing to attend university and learn Chinese before returning to his homeland in a state of disorientation and oppression. I won't touch too much on the plot but the story has a dreamlike, almost hallucinatory feel owing to the odd characters the protagonist encounters and the oppressive fog which blankets the city.

I think this book is incredibly important and I am pleased it is reaching a wider readership through this excellent translation, however my main criticism is mostly down to my own failings as a reader: a fair chunk of this novel went way over my head, and I think this is down to my lack of knowledge of the cultural context and history of the region and its people. The introduction went a long way in helping to inform my understanding of what goes on in the novel but I think a bit more research before going in would have meant I got more out of the book. The only other real criticism I have is that invariably every female character is either old and ugly or young and beautiful and the protagonist is picturing her naked body. No thanks.

That said, please do not let me own personal reaction put you off reading this novel if it appeals to your reading sensibilities.

Thank you Netgalley and Columbia University Press for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short novel, but word for word, a tough read. The draw here is the reality behind the fiction. The author is a Uyghur who has subsequently joined the ranks of the countless Uyghur detainees at the hands of the Chinese government. The novel follows a night in the life of an unnamed man who came to Urumchi, a city of 4 million on the western frontier of China, looking for work. While it ostensibly captures something of the Uyghur experience of dislocation, any political undertones are subtle. What is not subtle are the experiences of confusion, rejection, self-doubt, and extreme alienation of the narrator aiming to navigate a world where his humanity isn’t acknowledged.

The narrator is himself, we learn, dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic home life, which certainly exacerbates his inability to cope with the systemic issues he faces as migrant. But the narration isn’t linear, and it depicts a dreamscape littered with confusing images and experiences. The prologue highlights Tursun’s interest in western authors like Camus, Kafka, and Kundera, and those influences are evident in the narrative style, which might reasonably be likened to poetry.

The narrator writes of open hostility and mistrust, and a landscape of anti-urban ruin. The city is filthy, rat-ridden, bloodstained, and enveloped in a literal and metaphorical fog that hangs over every scene. Cruelty is dealt with a smile. And these images are repeated over and over, with an acknowledged lack of respect. And the hostility is race- and language-based.

The faces of the men were beardless like women and their skin was very delicate and unadorned. I was always surprised by how they could tell each other apart.
The most surprising thing to me was that the people in the city could never differentiate us from each other either.

The author’s befuddlement can be seen in a mantra that is repeated throughout, “I don’t know anyone in this strange city, so it’s impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone.” But most of the time we are getting his general stream of consciousness more than we’re getting an actual narrative of what he’s experiencing in his wandering.

Later, I realized that the root of the fears that humans have is just this: infinity. The infinity of the sky, of time, of not knowing what comes after death, threatens humans. To eradicate the threat that comes from the infinity of the universe, humans have broken it up into the small parts where they live—giving it borders and standards.

I wondered at times if some of the translations were clunky.

It wasn’t hard to see from his face that his anger was wearing down his soul. It looked like it was a straw roof being blown by the wind, or like perhaps it was being eaten out by a worm.

A light hanging in front of a door just a short distance away melded into the fog, as if it was not a light but reddish fog floating in gray fog. The part at the center of it resembled the light red color unintentionally revealed on the clothes of a woman who was having her period.

Ultimately, I think novel succeeds as a piece of political and social commentary. I can’t remember being more uncomfortable reading a book, and of course, that’s by design. As a work of literature, I am sure more than a little is lost in translation. But Tursun undoubtedly succeeds in getting his point across. Now may he find his way out of prison.

[Arno Vlierberghe · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Ik ken niemand in deze vreemde stad, dus ik kan onmogelijk iemands vriend of vijand zijn.'

[Ben]

Backstreet Boys

This was an interesting story.

I found it very reminiscent of the writing of Kōbō Abe.
Artistic, poetic, and imaginative - but coated in paranoia with social-outcast undertones.

Darren Byler was a great translator, and I am so glad to have read this book from its' original language.
I also highly recommend his books too
Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City
and
In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony

Check it out!

3.8/5

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark, disturbing novel that gives an unique insight into the plight of the Uyghurs, persecuted Muslim minority in China. The first person narrator builds the atmosphere of alienation, oppression and violence. It is even more moving thanks to the long introduction, which gives necessary context and reveals that the author himself disappeared in the infamous camps in Xinjiang.

Thanks to the publisher, Columbia University Press, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

[Desiree Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read the intro (14%) and the next 18% (to 32%). Really wanted to like this, as I think the topic of the horrific prejudice it outlines is so important. However, this one's just not for me. A bit too gritty. But deeply atmospheric, for sure.

[Fransien Vandeweghe · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 *

[Caroline Yun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Also another book that everyone should read, seeing that the Uyghur genocide is not talked about enough. Very similar to ‘L’Etranger’…but better and more impactful (sorry to Camus).

[Steve Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Claustrophobic and suffocating to read. But worth the effort. The Uyghur Crisis in China does not get as much press as it should, so reading a short novel like this is illuminating.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must first mention that I found the Introduction by Darren Byler to be very informative regarding the Uyghurs as I had not heard of the situation until a couple of years ago from watching the news. I think the Introduction does a brief and succinct overview of what has gone on in Xingjiang starting in 1949. At that time China had a Civil War in which colonialism occurred to transform the area of Xingjiang which was the Uyghur homeland. The land came under the control of the Chinese, including farms and industries.

Then in 1990, there was what Mr. Byler calls the Chinese version of the United States’ Manifest Destiny. The project was to connect Xingjiang with the rest of China via a mass “in-migration” of the majority Han Chinese who were looking for a better life and to take advantage of new opportunities. The Uyghurs lost all decision making and ability to earn a living in their homeland. By comparison, what had happened to the Native Americans in the US has happened to the Uyghurs who were required to learn Chinese and the Han way of life. But the reality is just as it was with the Native Americans who could never pass for Whites, Uyghurs can never pass for Han Chinese and find nothing but discrimination.

I stopped reading the Introduction at the title “Reading The Backstreets” through “Native Belonging” as I didn’t want to be told how to read the story, but to make my own judgement. I did go back to read those sections after I finished the story. Perhat Tursun, the author of The Backstreets “disappeared” in 2017. It appears he is in prison serving a 17-year sentence, but the reason has not been given.

The Backstreets was, to me, a surreal and dark story. Two things crept up in my mind as I was reading was that I thought I was watching a Twilight Zone episode and for film buffs out there, I was reminded of the 1920 German horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. And to go even further as I kept reading on, I thought of The Theatre of the Absurd and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot whereby the characters Vladimir and Estragon became the protagonist and the fog in The Backstreets and Godot was represented by the elusive place to sleep. In reality it seems that the book most likely was fashioned after Camus’ The Stranger, an author whose books Tursun was said to like. Tursun also had to be extremely careful how he wrote this story; every word counted so as not to state what was really going on to preclude arrest.

The protagonist wanders the backstreets of the town, Urumchi, which is the capital of Xingjiang. There is fog which never dissipates, horrible smells, and aggressive anti-social inhabitants. He is searching for a place to sleep. He has no possessions except for items in a single desk drawer where he works. While he is wandering, we also learn of his childhood and also his education in Beijing. He is obsessed with numbers, of which I have an opinion about why, but I think everyone should make their own opinion on this. The Introduction and Notes also make a suggestion as to why.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

A difficult book to rate. On one hand it's a unique and vividly well written perspective on an oppressed minority not often seen by Westerners. But on the other it's also a dour, dreary, and repetitive read.

"I don't know anyone in this strange city, so it's impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone."

This phrase is repeated multiple times throughout the book. The story slowly unfurls through our protagonists stream of conscience thoughts and experiences. He walks about the city hyper focused on the oppressive fog, smells, and numbers of passing houses and license plates that he tries to make sense out of.

His life story is gradually revealed in small snippets of memories that he shares - his time at university in Beijing, his alcoholic father, elementary school, etc. and it paints a tragic picture.

The protagonist is essentially a ghost. A person desperately trying to find any semblance of humanity in the wasteland of the city. He isn't connected to anything or anyone. He is constantly surprised and confused by the hostility that he encounters even until the very end.

Perhaps the story behind the story is more interesting. I'm glad I read this work, but also relieved to be out of the fog.

[rara ➶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okayyyyyy this was actually very hard for me to get through. I am trying to read more works by Uyghur authors, and so the beginning of this story was quite good. The experience of being Uyghur in China, as a student, then an employee, was quite intriguing, and also irritating to read. The blatant discrimination is disguising.

Next, I also liked the Translator's note in regard to the many people that are still in prison, re-education camp, the forced "assimilation", etc.

Lastly, the rest of the book I personally did not enjoy. The discussion of women was giving Murakami in the worst way possible, and that I usually don't LOVE, I don't even really like, but anyway.

Overall, I am glad I read this, helps me expand my horizons. I look forward to reading more works by Uyghur authors in the future 😁😁

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very similar vibes to L'étranger by Camus but also reminds me of the flaneur-type biographical fiction. I think the strength of this novel is through Tursun's ability to communicate the loneliness that the narrator experiences, as a Uyghur man among Han (and other non-Turkic) Chinese. The discrimination described is appalling. This book made me quite sad, and especially so knowing that Tursun is somewhere in a concentration camp for bogus charges ostensibly for petitioning the Chinese government respect the Uyghur language. I work in the same department as one of the translators, Dr. Darren Byler, who I'm thankful to for bringing this book and Uyghur literature to my attention.

[Zazou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wat vond ik dit een vreselijk boek. Het voorwoord was heel interessant en daardoor begreep ik ook meer van het verhaal, maar de manier van schrijven was zéér beklemmend. Op alle bladzijden kwam wel het woord “mist” voor, soms wel tien keer op één bladzijde en het werd ook steeds mistiger in mijn hoofd, want ik snapte er helemaal niets meer van.
Uiteraard vraagt iedereen zich nu af waarom ik het tóch heb uitgelezen: het was maar een dun boekje en ik hoopte dat er een moment zou komen waarbij ik opeens het licht zou zien. Maar helaas.

[Seigfreid Uy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a now-missing and presumably imprisoned author, the Backstreets is a novel from Xinjiang that talks of a man that lives in isolation in big cities in a constant state of searching -- this through the fog of industrial pollution in cities such as Beijing and Xinjiang

Tursun writes of a stream-of-consciousness novel that is defined more by its atmosphere and musings, rather than any form of plot. We experience a moody atmosphere that would spit out recurring themes on philosophy, sex, violence, isolation — masked with the protagonist’s obsession with numbers.

I’d have to admit this was a tough read — not in its language, but on its transitions in its storytelling as it’s not generally my preference. But don’t get me wrong, the raw honesty despite the fictional nature of the book gave me a better understanding of the inner turmoil that such a helpless situation would cause. The introduction, all the more, with detailed context setting on the Xinjiang struggle and the author’s own experience and disappearance. An important read.

Glad I was able to read and experience this -- and thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the early copy!

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful stuff here. A really good insight into a population that has not had the opportunity to represent themselves in the US. The narrator is obsessed with numbers and clearly mentally unwell, certainly a symptom of their environment. I don’t want to say too much beyond that it should be read.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tragic and heart-rending book. A meditation on cultural dislocation, internal colonialism, disorientation and trauma. It pulls no punches. It presents an unflattering, but honest, portrayal of what these processes do to the psyche of those on the receiving end of this treatment. The domestic violence, the anger, the sadness and loss.

Also, one of the few Uyghur books translated into English. A hard read, but a good one. It moved m quite a lot and left me feeling quite shattered. I will sit on this for a while.

[Elephant Abroad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressing and bewildering account of prejudice.