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“... Ma Jian wrote The Noodle Maker in 1990, four years after he left China for Hong Kong, then still a British colony. When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997, he left for Europe, living first in Germany, and later moving to London. Red Dust, the English translation of his memoir about three years’ wandering in remote parts of China, was published in 2001 ...”

“... Ma Jian’s new novel, The Dark Road, also serves as an indictment of the Chinese government and the crimes it has committed in the name of modernisation. Its principal target is the one-child policy, imposed in 1978 and still officially in effect, which has led to mass campaigns of forced sterilisation and abortion, as well as infanticide and child trafficking ...”

“... plan, a model of willed ordinariness. Or only the imitation of such a model. How could he know? Ma Jian (as seen through Tash Aw’s translation) translates into Chinese not only Smith’s English but also Pontiggia’s Italy. He keeps Italian touches – the hero is half-Italian – but the politics and the wars belong to China, as do the ways one ...”

“... language was ‘diseased’ by Maoism, as much Chinese writing after 1949 inevitably was: even Ma Jian, an exile whose novels take on such taboo topics as the one-child policy (in The Dark Road) and the Tiananmen protests (in Beijing Coma), has been infected with Maospeak. (The only pure writer under this rubric was Ha Jin, who, Link said, ‘writes ...”

“... the viewer should adopt in order to cancel the distortion. ‘Woodcut Collection’ (1979) by Ma Desheng ‘Spring’ (1979) by Wang Hai ‘Father’ (1980) by Luo Zhongli ‘The Third Generation’ (1984) by Hu Duoling ‘Self Portrait – A Subjugated Soul’ (1985-9) by Cai Guo ‘Human Beings with their Clock No. 2’ (1987) by Ziang Jianjun ‘Big ...”

“... of successful capitalism, and of a globalised aesthetic that prizes writers who, like Orhan Pamuk, Ma Jian and Haruki Murakami, are thought to have transcended local issues and acquired a ‘universal relevance’.It’s hard not to share the derision, once the victim has been so tendentiously trussed. Who could possibly approve of this ...”