HISTORICALLY
INSIGHTFUL
In 1937, during
the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese imperial Army captured the city of
Nanking (Nanjing), the then capital of the Republic of China, and carried out a
massacre in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians including women
and children were slaughtered and thousands of women and girls were raped. This
shameful episode from the history, known as Nanking Massacre or the Rape of
Nanking, makes the backdrop of Julie O’ Yang’s debut novel Butterfly.
The eponymous
protagonist of this heartachingly beautiful novel, Butterfly, is a married
Chinese woman and calligrapher who has lost her teenage son in the Nanking
Massacre. Years later, still trying to overcome her great loss, she happens to
meet a mysterious young man almost of her dead son’s age and starts a torrid
love affair with him. But, then she discovers a horrible secret about the young
man and faces the biggest dilemma of her life.
The book is not
just a love story with darker shades but also is a treatise on the futility and
brutality of wars between nations and a critique on the idea of nation state.
Historically insightful with political undertones, the novel has fully fleshed out
multi-layered and credible characters. Written beautifully and structured intelligently,
you get hooked to the story right from the first page. The denouement is also equally
fascinating.
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