I read Ma Jian’s China Dream 2 years before I read The Noodle Maker. I found that I much preferred the latter. The premise itself did it for me. A professional writer and a professional blood donor meet weekly to discuss life, philosophy, and the people they meet.

On one of these drunken evenings, the writer talks about the stories he would write if he had the courage. The people around him inspire him as their lives are dictated by fate and politics. All these stories and characters are set against post-Tiananmen China and Open Door Policy era.

The book is divided into short stories about interconnected characters, such as an actress who stages her own suicide, a painter with a talking three-legged dog, a literary editor humiliated by his successful wife, a father trying to abandon his mentally challenged daughter, and an entrepreneur who runs a private crematorium. Each of these characters is manipulated not only by the “noodle-making hands” of the professional writer, but also by fate, politics, and a relentless society. A society that doesn’t fully understand the west it is adopting (because of the Open Door Policy) and isn’t willing to let go of its ideas around personal freedom gives birth to a hard-to-swallow satire. It’s so dark and dry that at times it’s tough to play along with the author.

Reading the Noodle Maker felt a lot like reading a montage of claustrophobia and severe conditioning of a nation. The conversations between characters and their seemingly ‘irrational’ acts only serve to increase the chaos. The book is by no means emotional or heart-wrenching, it’s just horrifying because so much of what is written in the book has the potential to be 100% real. There’s a throbbing brutality underlying the entire text that I found to be really impactful.

The Noodle Maker will stay with me for a long time because it’s such a strong and powerful illustration of a people living under constant scrutiny and surveillance.