Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao

by Jonathan Tel

Overview

“A remarkable and very moving feat of storytelling.” —Andrew Holgate

China is the center of the world, and the center of China is Beijing, and at the center of Beijing is a billionaire financier named Qin. At the opening of this novel-in-stories, billionaire Qin is lying in state at his funeral, victim of a sudden and premature death. Moving back and forth in time, we meet a wide range of Chinese, all linked to Qin by a degree or two of separation: a property developer, a street artist, a prostitute, a fashion model, a spy, a thief, an expat lawyer, a muckraking journalist. By the end of this biting, post-post-modern cultural observation, the manner of Qin’s death is revealed. Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao presents today’s China in its full and fabulous complexity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781885983770
Publisher:	Turtle Point Press
Publication date:	01/14/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jonathan Tel is the author of three previous works of fiction. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker and Granta . Stories in this book have won the Sunday Times EFG Story Prize, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. He teaches history at Stanford University in Berlin, travels widely, and is in Beijing as often as possible.

Editorial Reviews

02/10/2020

Tel’s beguiling collection (after The Beijing of Possibilities) follows several characters in China who are connected to a billionaire before his death. In “The Sadness and Beauty of the Billionaire,” Qin, the billionaire, says, “The truth always lies in the gaps between the stories.” Indeed, as readers page through the stories, they gain a sense of the bigger picture around Qin. In “Elvis Has Left Beijing” two Chinese women decide on different dating paths: one with Chinese men and one with foreigners. During their story, a person in a panda suit rides by on a bike. Later, that moment appears in “Year of the Panda,” in which Tel reveals who is in the panda outfit and why. As characters feature in multiple stories, their connections to Qin emerge: his wife’s chauffeur, a business associate, or a prostitute he visited. Readers will find themselves flipping back to previous stories to find links and fill in the gaps around Qin’s life. Tel’s masterful work is an enchanting enigma. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao

"[In]Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao . . . the cult of personality has given way to a cult of cash. . . . We follow an unemployed construction worker who begins stealing shoes from funerals to sell on the black market; a barber whose woes multiply after he's swindled by a customer; and, in the deviously good 'The Average Person in China,' an everyman professor who is mistakenly involved in a massibe bribery attempt. 'Money,' the professor realizes, 'is a psychotropic drug; it transforms all your perceptions.' Mr. Tel is excellent at subtly warping the ordinary experiences of his characters, blending the real with the absurd."—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Tel's beguiling collection (after The Beijing of Possibilities) follows several characters in China who are connected to a billionaire before his death. . . . Qin, the billionaire, says, 'The Truth always lies in the gaps between the stories.' . . . Readers will find themselves flipping back to previous stories to find links and fill in the gaps around Qin's life. Tel's masterful work is an enchanting enigma."—Publishers Weekly

"In busy Beijing, everyone is connected. So a writer discovers . . . in Jonathan Tel's deliciously tangled Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao. . . .Its characters rise and fall, then return again later, their scars and hardened shells exposed and complex. The end impression reveals certain truths, among them that every action must eventually be answered for."—Editor's pick, Foreword Reviews

"Jonathan Tel has an amazing ability to 'get into the heads of Chinese people.' His characters feel authentic, yet the storytelling is refreshingly different."—Lijia Zhang, author of Lotus and Socialism is Great!: A Worker's Memoir

Praise for Jonathan Tel

“Bright, sharply imagined, meticulously homeworked, and engagingly written—these [are] hallmarks of Jonathan Tel’s fictions.”—John Barth

“An ingenious, often surreal account of the tensions between ancient tradition and go-go capitalism…Smart, subtly observed, and entertaining.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[P]art W.G. Sebald and part Italo Calvino, [this] provides a glimpse for the Western reader into the complicated, vibrant world of Beijing.”—Publishers Weekly

“Astonishing…Written with assurance and insight.”—Library Journal

“[A] convincing picture of the new China, a place where the old hierarchies have outlasted the pieties that sustained them.”—Adam Mars-Jones

“[Tel] plunges us into an exotic but familiar relationship. [This] portrait of dependence and exploitation is rueful, funny and utterly compelling.”—Philip Hensher

From the Publisher