Lao She
The two Ma, father and son
Oscar Mondadori, 362 pages, 14.50 euros
Before the avalanche of news we recover this funny little classic of twentieth century Chinese literature (published in 1929) which narrates the confrontation between two cultures in an ironic and amusing but also instructive way, critical of the prejudices (both English and Chinese) with which protagonists have to do, migrants in search of fortune in a still imperial London where anti-Chinese prejudice is nourished by popular and detective literature (with the super-villain Fu-Manchu), cinema and theater. The two Ma disembark there, assisted by a former missionary who places them with a widow with her daughter, to open an antiques shop, and suffer not a few difficulties and mistrust, but also prejudiced towards the English.
Lao She, former author of Rickshaw boy, wrote a nice comedy and very well translated and presented by two young scholars, Gottardo and Morzenti, which suggests some formidable cinematographic comedies by Ealing (perhaps with Alec Guinness) and first by the novels of PG Wodehouse (and Dickens) or Butler by McCarey (on a super English in far west), a film dear to Calvino. Stories like that of the Ma are repeated every day also in Italy. His acute author did not go wrong: he cheered for the revolution but killed himself in 1966 for the persecutions suffered by the fanatics of the “cultural” one.
.