"Market Street, first published in China in 1936, was written by the young woman writer Xiao Hong, who is best known for her two short novels, Field of Life and Death and Tales of Hulan River. In Market Street, the twenty-year-old author recounts in fictional autobiographical form two years of her short life when she lived in Harbin between 1932 and 1934. . . . Goldblatt has furnished a translation up to his usual high standard."
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Pacific Affairs
"The dialogue is absolutely convincing and the author’s ability to present daily adventure profound. In its specificity, Market Street offers an ultimately universal lesson about freedom and oppression."
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Boston Globe
"A classic of contemporary Chinese literature."
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Kirkus Reviews
"First published in 1936, "This simple little book has the irresistible appeal of all narratives of survival, and it is also an interesting account of the times, which included the Japanese occupation of China in 1931. Later Xiao Hong became an anti-Japanese writer of considerable celebrity . . . [until] her death at age thirty."
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Booklist
"Market Street, this hole in the wall in a Manchurian city, is a state of mind. . . . Even in translation [Xiao Hong’s] voice is that of a true original."
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Far Eastern Economic Review
"Intensely personal, lyrical, evocative, these poignant sketches detail with urgent beauty two years in the life of a young writer who confronts, first, the misery of hunger and cold, and later, the fear of seizure by the occupation police. The book is powerful in its confinement, vivid in its simplicity. . . . Howard Goldblatt has preserved in graceful, supple, often poetic English the acuity of insight and the nuances of tone."
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Los Angeles Times
