Sally Fitzpatrick reviews The English Class by Ouyang Yu

The English Class 

by Ouyang Yu

Transit Lounge, 2010

ISBN 9780980571783

Reviewed by SALLY FITZPATRICK 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Having resisted colonial forays for millennia, China is ironically westernizing itself, a cultural revolution with arguably as much impact as that of the Great Proletarian Revolution.  Even the poorest Chinese peasant, willing to dismiss the intense beauty embodied in the Chinese language, may believe the English language has the power to transform their life. This belief in the transformative power of English is the driving ambition, and perhaps the flaw, in the heart of Jing, the hapless, truck-driver protagonist of Ouyang Yu’s  recent novel, The English Class.