Dai Sijie's bestselling first novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Searnstress, was a delightful fable.
His second is a Chinese Don Quixote, following the misadventures of Mr Muo, Chinas first psychoanalyst. It's been over ten years since Muo left China. He's been happily studying Freud in France since then. But when he hears that his first love has been thrown into a Chinese jail he rushes home to rescue her. Muo tries to bribe judge Di but, sick of cash and cars, the judge demands that he find him a virgin to deflower instead.
And so Muo embarks on a hilarious quest... Witty, moving and surreal, Mr Muo's Travelling Couch is a highly enjoyable satire of one innocent man's attempt to negotiate the mind-boggling maze of modern China.