{"product_id":"9780312424794","title":"The Noodle Maker","description":"From Mi Jian, the highly acclaimed Chinese dissident, comes a satirical novel about the absurdities of life in a post-Tiananmen China.\u003cp\u003eTwo men meet for dinner each week. Over the course of one of these drunken evenings, the writer recounts the stories he would write, had he the courage: a young man buys an old kiln and opens a private crematorium, delighting in his ability to harass the corpses of police officers and Party secretaries, while swooning to banned Western music; a heartbroken actress performs a public suicide by stepping into the jaws of a wild tiger, watched nonchalantly by her ex-lover. Extraordinary characters inspire him, their lives pulled and pummeled by fate and politics, as if they are balls of dough in the hands of an all-powerful noodle maker.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMa Jian's satirical masterpiece allows us a humorous, yet profound, glimpse of those struggling to survive under a system that dictates their every move.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43333721915453,"sku":"9780312424794","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0603\/0838\/9949\/files\/9780312424794_p0.jpg?v=1783641820","url":"https:\/\/www.tatteredcover.com\/products\/9780312424794","provider":"Tattered Cover","version":"1.0","type":"link"}