Once on a Moonless Night

Once on a Moonless Night

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Editorial Reviews

From the author of the beloved best seller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a haunting tale of love and of the beguiling power of a lost language.

When Puyi, the last emperor, was exiled to Manchuria in the early 1930s, it is said that he carried an eight-hundred-year-old silk scroll inscribed with a lost sutra composed by the Buddha. Eventually the scroll would be sold illicitly to an eccentric French linguist named Paul d’Ampere, in a transaction that would land him in prison, where he would devote his life to studying the ineffably beautiful ancient language of the forgotten text.

Our unnamed narrator, a Western student in China in the 1970s, hears this story from the greengrocer Tumchooq—his name the same as that of the language in which the scroll is written—who has recently returned from three years of reeducation. She will come again and again to Tumchooq’s shop near the gates of the Forbidden City, drawn by the young man and his stories of an estranged father. But when d’Ampere is killed in prison, Tumchooq disappears, abandoning the narrator, now pregnant with his child. And it is she, going in search of her lost love, who will at last find the missing scroll and discover the truth of the Buddha’s lesson that begins “Once on a moonless night . . .” in this story that carries us across the breadth of China’s past, the myth and the reality.

Customer Reviews

Never, on any night

Reviewed by Rampaging Hippogriff, 2009-10-29

The cover of the (2009, Chatto & Windus) edition of this book I started to read is very pretty, with words & images looking as if they have been embroidered in a simplified willow pattern or orientalist type decoration. Otherwise, thanks again to the the public library system for saving me from having spent money on it.

The novel that explores an historical, intellectual, artistic, linguistic, &c mystery or problem, especially in an exotic locale (which tends to mean not the suburbs of an english-speaking country, which is where most of us live, afterall, and we know nothing so sophisticatedly interesting ever happens here)using a contemporary person and selected narrative devices to explain the past (diary, academic, grandmother, obscure or overlooked historical documents, lost paintings or architecture) is now a classic, and comes in a wide spectrum of competence. The author is let down somewhat by his translator, whose use of the term "tins" of coca-cola, jars, although presuambly all those commas were present in the original, as I should hope no one would feel the need to put that many in otherwise.

Having reached page 43, the tension created between the promise of this book and the reality was too much. Without being an expert in China and its past, I doubt very much whether a Chinese academic in the 1970s would show up to a meeting with foreigners dressed in a vaguely imperial outfit, whether he would then chat to the foreign narrator on public transport about the last emperor and his history, whether he would let her follow him into his personal room (not really a house) without comment, and keep talking to her about emperor and his behaviour. It wasn't a safe thing to do. The narrator's descriptions of the streets around her Chinese university sound more like old streets in France (what use would a haberdashery or tailor's be in China in those days?). The final straw was the document-within-the-text that was quoted as saying "At the beginning of October in the Year of the Cockerel (1862)": if this is meant to show that we're using the Chinese calendar, fine, but - they didn't then have October, and while 1862 may have been the year of the cockerel, that is to do with horoscopes, imperial China counted years by the reign of the current Emperor.

O, and in Sanskrit, verbs don't only have the passive form. Anyone with ten minutes and an interweb connection can find this out. If you need a funny language, make up one of your own, don't ruin a nice old one.

If a book is meant to be a light, casual adventure, the infelicities of accuracy can be overlooked, but for a novel claiming intellectual status - more Umberto Eco than Dan Brown, as it were -, surely a little more effort could have been made in getting the bleeding obvious correct.

Possibly the best read EVER!

Reviewed by J. Riche, 2009-10-07

Both intellectually and emotionally deep. I finished the last page and immediately started again at page 1. The historial expanse is breath taking, the language leaves you breathless, and the lesson leaves you gasping. It's a desert island selection that really will last a lifetime.

A Difficult but Worthwhile and Captivating Novel

Reviewed by Bookreporter.com, 2009-09-15

Some books are easy to describe. You start at the beginning, discuss the plot, main characters and conflict, and avoid revealing any major surprises to would-be readers. But ONCE ON A MOONLESS NIGHT, the latest from BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS author Dai Sijie, is not so easy to write about. With shifting points of view, a barely linear progression of action, and stories within stories, this novel is complex and highly literary.

ONCE ON MOONLESS NIGHT is narrated by a French scholar of Asian and African languages. As a young student she spent time, in 1978 and 1979, in a newly opened China, studying. With social, cultural and economic tensions running high in Peking, she begins a relationship with a bright young man who worked in her neighborhood greengrocer's shop. Tumchooq Zhong, named for an ancient, almost lost language, was raised by his mother without knowing his father until he was older. His absent father was another French scholar, Paul d'Ampere, who turned his back on his wealthy European heritage for Chinese citizenship. His adult life was devoted to finding a scrap of ancient text, a legendary Buddhist sutra, written on silk, in the Tumchooq language. His obsession was so widely known that he was rumored to have traded his wife for the scrap.

In any case, he spent the last years of his life in a horrific Chinese labor camp, a prisoner of the state. d'Ampere's abandonment, forced or otherwise, of his family mirrors Tumchooq's abandonment of his French girlfriend years later when, after his father's death, he picks up the search for the sutra and leaves her, unaware of her pregnancy.

The unnamed narrator returns to France and spends the next years studying, teaching and thinking about Tumchooq (the language and the man). Meanwhile, Tumchooq moves forward on his same path --- trying to understand the father he barely knew, fully know the language he was named for, and find the missing silk scrap of sutra. Their stories are intertwined with those of d'Ampere, various Chinese scholars, politicians and nobles, and even such figures as Marco Polo.

ONCE ON A MOONLESS NIGHT is an elegant and thoughtful novel. It explores scholarship as a passionate affair and religion as a holistic worldview, identity and oppression, literature, hope and romance. It is also a celebration of the joy of a good story. Sijie delights in storytelling generally and telling this story in particular. Language is another central theme. Written and spoken, language has powers and weaknesses: here it has the power to heal from madness and despair but also the power to drive people to obsession.

Sijie's latest must be read carefully. It requires full concentration because of the stories nested within other stories, the tangle of characters, and the scope of action from ancient China to the contemporary communist state. Sijie references many other works of literature, and attentive readers will be rewarded. This is a difficult but worthwhile and captivating novel with a beautiful ending sure to resonate with its audience.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

finally, a truly great novel of China

Reviewed by Lisa Lee, 2009-08-16

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress proved Dai Sijie is a magical storyteller. Once on a Moonless Night proves he is truly a great writer. The way he weaves tales of the ancient past into a completely moving contemporary story demonstrates not only his virtuoso narrative skill but also how much modern Chinese culture is shaped by its very long history in a way that is almost unimaginable in the West. In addition, what the story has to tell us about the ways language defines us, ways we don't even notice, is nothing less than profound. This is by far the more satisfying and magnificently written novel I have read this year--and that is counting The White Tiger, Cutting For Stone, Netherland and 2666. My book club hasn't yet picked a book in hardcover, but I will be recommending this one. I will be more than glad to read it again soon. In fact, that was the urge I had as soon as I'd turned the last page.

complex well written historical novel

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner, 2009-08-15

In 1978 the French student attends the University of Peking studying Chinese literature when she is hired as a translator between the Chinese representatives and a western movie crew wanting to make a film on the last Emperor Puyi. At the meeting she learns of the mysterious second century Buddhist sutra written in an unknown language that the emperor inherited. She becomes obsessed with translating this treasure. The student finds out about the sutra's history in the twelfth century when the Japanese incarcerates Puyi; who apparently ripped it in half and tossed it from a plane.

The student further learns from street stand seller Tumchooq that his father Paul d'Ampere did some work on the half found by her maternal family; her mom is curator at the museum of the Forbidden City. D'Ampere went to prison for twenty five years until he died. The student-narrator aborts the baby she had with Tumchooq and leaves for France after he left the city motivated by to seek the missing half. She tracks him in Burma in 1990, but he is arrested and deported to Laos.

This is a complex well written historical novel that either grips the audience thoroughly with its poetic look back in time or turns off the readers with its flowery description of the past. Case in point is some of the passages go on and on and on with incredible depth like the historian looking at the ancient emperor's love of the art of calligraphy. Character driven including the prized sutra that seems to have a life of its own, ONCE ON A MOONLESS NIGHT is not for everyone as the action in spite of imprisonment in several eras and locales is limited to musings.

Harriet Klausner