Dai Sijie - whose novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress was a surprise hit in 2001 - shifts his attention to modern-day China in his new novel ...
But readers expecting Dai's second novel to be a sequel to -- or a rerun of -- ``Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress'' will probably be disappointed. Rambling, picaresque and satiric, ``Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch'' lacks the hopeful glow that suffused the first book, even when it was depicting the suffering caused by the Cultural Revolution. This time we're in contemporary China, where Dai finds more greed than hopefulness.

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