Did not finish book. Stopped at 35%.
I was very interested to read a translated book of fiction from an Uyghur writer. My thanks to Columbia University Press and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. It's difficult to say whether it's the original writing style or the translation of Darren Byler that soured my reading experience. The bombastic self-righteous introduction by Byler certainly didn't do it any favours. There is another Uyghur translator who is unnamed due to having been disappeared. This short novel is in a stream of consciousness style with a deliberate disorienting bleak isolating effect meant to reflect the protagonist's mental state. This literary device can be wielded to great effect such as with László Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance.

I made a good effort to plow through the book but picked it up and put it down repeatedly over a few weeks with little enthusiasm. The last straw was when the protagonist was leering at a woman emerging from a public washroom at an out of the way place and thinking to himself that she 'smells like semen.' How uncomfortable and unsafe did this woman feel being stared at hungrily like that? Being oppressed does not give an excuse to oppress others. The suggestion that she is dressed provocatively is just gross.

There are many non-fiction memoir books by Ugyhers detailing their experiences in the hands of the Chinese state. I intend to turn to those for a better understanding instead.

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.

I never want to see this book again in my life.

It isn't badly written; on the contrary, I think it accomplishes what it meant to accomplish quite well: reading it, you feel like walking endlessly through a fog, trying to find meaning, disconnected from anyone and anything, lost, alienated.

At first, I thought that calling a book that's barely 113 pages long a "novel" is a bit inappropriate. Surely, it would be better described as a novella? Especially since it has a fairly long introduction? But no. Having read it, it feels longer, all-encompassing, endless. There is no escaping the fog in Ürümqi.

So, what's it about?

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

An Uyghur man gets a job in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang region in China. His office doesn't provide him with a place to stay, so one night he wanders off to find one. What we get is his journey through the fog. People pretend not to notice him, or they're openly hostile. He tried to get directions, but only gets fear and aggression in return. And all the while, he's walking the streets and thinking of a random piece of paper with numbers on it; he found it on the floor at the office and he's been trying hard to interpret it ever since. Some numbers look like his height, or his age.

As he walks, he also remembers things from his childhood, or his time as a student in Beijing, his time at the office. His father getting drunk, the superstition of always starting a journey with one's right foot, the smiling man who makes him write a letter at work, the isolation in Beijing. I'm making this sound more like a story than it is - instead, these memories come over him like people walking in through the fog, disconnected, timeless, one on top of the other, starting and ending without going anywhere, sometimes repeating or rewriting themselves as he walks along and mixes life and philosophy and madness.

The book's honestly quite great at creating the feeling of loss and despair. Everything is significant, including numbers randomly seen on papers; nothing is significant. The sentence that appears over and over, "I don't know anyone in this strange city, so it's impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone", feels at first like a statement of truth, then like one of isolation, and finally like a shield. How can people hate him, when he doesn't know anyone? But they do.

<b>It's honestly the introduction that makes this book worthwhile.</b> Explaining the context in which it was written (by an Uyghur man, about the Uyghur experience in China, influenced by his European studies, read by Uyghur men who find themselves in his work, and probably incarcerated by the Chinese government some time after writing this book, presumably to be released in 17 years) gave it a meaning I don't think it would have had for me otherwise.

<i>I would like to thank NetGalley and Columbia University Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

the Backstreets is a very important book, illuminating the lives of Uyghur people in China. I didn't love the writing style, but the substance was very impactful.

I very much appreciated the experience of reading this by a very influential Uyghur writer. It’s such a shame that Tursun has since been disappeared by the government, as he clearly had so much more to say about the experience as an alienated and persecuted ethnic minority. I’ve been trying to learn more about the plight of the Uyghurs and Kazakhs in the Xinjiang region, and this was a great addition to that.

From a purely feminist point of view, I didn’t much care for the female objectification that occurred throughout, but I appreciated it despite this. It’s tough to identify this when it’s a chronicle of persecution and the precursor to genocide, but none of us are free unless all of us are free, etc.

Overall, I do recommend this book of a Uyghur flaneur in a changing Xinjiang. A marker of a changing region.

In <i>The Backstreets</i> we follow an unnamed Uyghur narrator through one night on the streets of Ürümchi. The narrator is made a stranger in his own land by the Han Chinese minority who control the region and we are witnesses to a thousand indignities driving him into madness.

This is an important work that gives insight into the Uyghur people and their situation under the rule of the People's Republic of China, but in didn't really click with me due to the stream of consciousness writing. Despite my dislike for the style, I am glad I read it and do recommend it.

Received via NetGalley.

This book was not quite what I expected. I think the significance of this novel and the author in the current political situation in Uyghur is incredibly important, which is initially what drew me to this book. Based on this fact alone, I think it is an important piece of work to read.
As a piece of fiction, I found the writing a little dense, despite it being a short novel. The style of writing was very descriptive and unfortunately, not a style of writing that is very engaging for me. The writing (or maybe the translation) felt very cold, and this could be purposeful given the subject matter, but it was challenging to read. I may try to read it again in the future to see if I can come at it from a different perspective.

Dnf 27% in.
My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for granting me access to an e-arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
Unfortunately, this novel just couldn't grab my attention. It is written in stream of consciousness style with a first person narrator and I just seemed incapable of keeping my kind focused enough to try and follow his thought pattern. Whenever I was reading and focusing on snippets of text, the text would definitely strike me as wonderfully told, but the whole kept escaping me and so ultimately I decided to put it down as I was reading without really taking anything in.

What a sad read! A novel of isolation and loneliness, it is a translation of a work by celebrated author, Perhat Tursun, on the expulsion and re-location of Uyghurs from their ancestral homes. Spoiler alert: no happy ending.

It’s flabbergasting to me that a work of such strangeness and pathos was written under such horrific circumstances. This novel is a testament to human resilience and the power of art to endure.

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.

The first-person narrator of Perhat Tursan’s The Backstreets brings to life one of the major human rights violations that began in the 1990s and has forced large numbers of China’s adult Uyghur population into detention camps and forced labor and their children into residential schools designed to strip them of their culture. A Uyghur, himself, Tursun is among the members of this ethnic minority to have been “disappeared” by China’s Han majority under Xi Jinping’s administration as Hans migrated into and took over Uyghur territory to exploit the area’s oil and natural gas resources.

The son of a teacher charged with counterrevolutionary activities and imprisoned during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, Tursun was among the first Uyghurs to be educated outside the Xinjiang Uyghur Atonomous Region. Attending university in Beijing during the 1990s, he draws upon his own sense of alienation and that of fellow Uyghur students in Beijing to develop his unnamed narrator. Whether in Beijing or in urban Urümchi where the he struggles to make a living as a member of the oppressed minority, Tursun’s narrator lives in a fog isolating him from the Han majority around him.

The Backstreets is a bleak character-driven novel punctuated by happier moments as the narrator summons memories of his mother, his first love, and rich Uyghur traditions. Readers will find no suspenseful, action-driven plot to keep them turning pages into the wee hours of the morning. However, this short novel’s social significance makes it well worth the reader’s time.

The lengthy, highly informative introduction provides a solid groundwork for understanding and appreciating this glimpse into the remote cultural conflict that occasionally enters the Western mainstream media.
Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for an advance reader copy of this important book.

As the translator mentions in his comprehensive introduction, the Uyghur author Tursun was influenced by Western authors such as Kafka, Camus, and Ellison, and that's a good indicator of what to expect in this excellent but difficult novel of alienation, ethnic discrimination, and personal tragedy.

While the action, such as it is, takes place on a single night of wandering the backstreets of a large city, the narrator's stream of consciousness wanders over his entire life: childhood in a Uyghur herding community, college in Beijing, and employment in Urumchi, a city in the Uyghur region effectively colonized by Han Chinese. The result is a picture of Uyghur society and its struggle for identity, but told through the very particular mind of a young man.

There is so much to experienced in this work without its context, and so much to be learned from that context. Western readers will most likely have no idea of the plight of the author or the political/social world that has caused it. The introduction to The Backstreets is impactful for that reason. Within the work itself, one feels the relationship to Camus and Ellison. Alienation within the most crowded spaces is haunting and symbolized effectively in Tursun’s hand.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

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.

The Backstreets follows an unnamed Uyghur protagonist through the streets of Ürümchi in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. It is a story of alienation, dissociation, and exclusion. The protagonist moves through the fog of the polluted city as if in a haze, leading a quiet and lonely life outside of mainstream society. The writing style is dense and long-winded, though I believe this is a conscious choice and it accurately conveys the monotony and isolation the protagonist experiences. Still, it made the book hard to get through.

I wouldn’t say that there is a plot in this stream of consciousness style novel. The protagonist’s main endeavor is finding a place to live, which proves difficult as he is discriminated against and assaulted constantly. The unreliability of memory and of the narrator himself add an interesting layer to the story, making the reading experience a foggy and challenging one. I found the descriptions of women as sexual objects in the protagonist’s fantasies pointless and creepy, as they did not add anything of significance but rather only made me grow distant from the protagonist. Still, I have wanted to read this book for a long time, especially because it is rare to find translations of Uyghur stories such as this one (this is the first of Tursun’s works to be translated into English).

Translator Darren Byler provides a very useful introduction of Uyghur people in China and Tursun’s life specifically. Both the author and the anonymous co-translator disappeared in 2017 and 2018 respectively, with Tursun thought to have received a 16 year prison sentence, while the co-translator is believed to have been sent to a so-called reeducation camp. According to Byler these camps regularly target Uyghurs who enjoy significant social influence.

This is not going to be the most rewarding or satisfying book you’ll ever read, but it will show you something previously unexplored and highly relevant.

#TheBackstreets is out September 13. Thank you @netgalley and @columbiauniversitypress for the ARC!

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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.

I'm not really sure how to review or rate this book. I found it quite hard to get through as the whole book is by and large just random thoughts strung together, thoughts the narrator has roaming the backstreets of Xinjiang.
This is also the setup of the book - the account of an unnamed narrator talking about what he sees and observes in those streets and his associations of these scenes. Seeking a better life by getting a government job in the city to flee from the poverty in the countryside, he quickly becomes disillusioned, however, as he is treated like a second-class citizen there.

The whole atmosphere of the book seems dystopian, unreal and bleak, and one can actually feel the fog, a central theme in the book and testament to the horrible pollution in Xinjiang, while reading; the book feels like it's almost physically shrouded in a veil.
It's the first translation of a book by an Uyghur author into English, and therefore it's absolutely worth the read.

Tursun disappeared in 2018 and, according to US-sources, was sentenced to 16 years of jail time - for what exactly is not known, but one can assume it's for the purpose of <i>"re-education"</i> in one way or another.

Many thanks to Columbia University Press and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this ebook!

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.

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 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.