Katherine
Authors: Anchee Min
“Striking and rich.”
—The Denver Post
“In
Katherine
the story charges forward with its own energy. But with Min, there is a second reward—her eloquent, passionate writing.”
—Detroit Free Press
“Many moments in this story are bound to amaze. . . .
Katherine
is a story of what happens when careless enthusiasm triggers a surge of emotion in hearts that are officially forbidden to feel anything. . . . It’s wrenching, melodramatic . . . yet real enough for both sparkling entertainment and deep, dark tragedy. Min’s simple recitation of events is made believable and entrancing by a poetic energy that always finds its mark.”
—The Village Voice
“Compelling . . . a powerful lesson in survival.”
—Vogue
“Searing, uncompromising prose . . . a tale of passion and betrayal.”
—Harper’s Bazaar
“We Americans talk about and value freedom, but readers who take up Anchee Min’s
Katherine
will surely understand it a little better. . . . Min does a fine, sensitive job of plumbing the chasm between cultures.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Superb writing . . .
Katherine
explores the complex hungers of the human soul caught up in the whirlwind of epic-making events.”
—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“Lyrical prose with a distinct Chinese flavor makes Min’s first novel—and its times—even more poignant and resonant.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Fascinating.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Passion and emotion fill Min’s prose from start to finish.”
—Yolk
“Lyrical . . . a little dewdrop of a work [that] echoes the voice of a young woman painfully finding her way out of a terrible historical experiment.”
—Library Journal
PRAISE FOR
Red Azalea . . .
“Achingly beautiful . . . Min has created a powerful sense of life in China during that country’s most heartbreaking time.”
—People
“The first half feels like a coming-of-age story in the tradition of Anne Frank, unpretentious, observing, and ever so vulnerable. By the second half, we’ve descended into a Kafkaesque world, the ultimate in ‘political correctness,’ in which passions and loyalty are distorted into obsessions and vengeance. . . . Anchee Min shows us how easily one can become inhuman, yet how difficult it is to extinguish the human spirit. She relates with unflinching detail the small moments of a life gone mad and how she both grasps for love and betrays those who love her.”
—Amy Tan
“Stirringly operatic . . . a moving, powerful book.”
—USA Today
“Min’s writing flows as naturally as water . . . the most stunningly beautiful prose you could hope to read.”
—The London Sunday Times
“This is Min’s first book, but few seasoned writers can convey the uneven terrain of the human heart as well as she has. . . . A book of deep honesty and morality . . . [a] remarkable story.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Compelling.”
—Glamour
“Brave and heartbreaking.”
—The Miami Herald
“Vast, incredible . . . her amazing prose pulses like a heartbeat through every page . . . grim and surreal: A.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Harrowing tales of life under totalitarianism have been published before, but Anchee Min’s
Red Azalea
—the story of a young girl coming of age in thrall to Maoism—ranks as one of the most memorable.”
—Newsweek
“Part of it reads like raw testimony, part of it reads like epic drama, and part of it reads like poetic incantation.”
—The New York Times
“Imagine not having any choice in where you live or the work you do. Imagine that your future depended upon your political performance, and your actions and words were recorded and reported to the state. Imagine further, you couldn’t read anything but state-approved materials. You couldn’t marry or even acknowledge feelings of love. Anchee Min doesn’t have to imagine; she lived it . . . .”
—Willamette Week
“Moving . . . remarkable . . . a complex, superbly structured coming-of-age story . . . suspenseful, beautifully crafted, and deeply human.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Unparalleled depth . . . a major contribution to the subject of coming of age during China’s cultural revolution.”
—Library Journal
“Unique . . . it promises to be a classic.”
—Catharine Stimpson
“Gripping.”
—The Orlando Sentinel
“Powerful, moving, erotic, and absolutely outstanding.”
—Mark Salzman, author of
Iron and Silk
“A distinct and moving voice speaking out of a cauldron of history.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A very good writer—from the very first description. Min has such a good eye, and an ear for strong dialogue. Above all, she is to be commended for her honesty and frankness, however painful.”
—Peter Matthiessen
“A valuable piece of social history.”
—Elle
“A marvelous story.”
—New York
“No Chinese, much less a Chinese woman, has written more honestly and poignantly than Anchee Min about the desert of solitude and human alienation at the center of the Chinese Communist revolution . . . truly universal relevance and appeal.”
—Vogue
Also by Anchee Min
RED AZALEA
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 1995 by Anchee Min
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN: 9781101666203
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Min, Anchee, date.
Katherine / Anchee Min.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-66620-3
1. Teacher-student relationships—Fiction. 2. Americans—China—Fiction. 3. English teachers—Fiction. 4. Young women—Fiction. 5. China—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3563.I4614 K37 2001
813’.54—dc21
00-065126
Riverhead hardcover edition, May 1995
Berkley mass-market edition, May 1996
Berkley trade paperback edition, March 2001
Book design by Tiffany Kukec.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Version_1
To Michele Dremmer
THANK YOU
Julie Grau, my editor, I am so lucky, just so lucky to have you.
Sandra Dijkstra, my agent, without you there would be no
Katherine
or
Red Azalea.
Min Naishi and Dai Dinyun, my father and mother, for giving me this mind, body, and soul. I love you very, very much.
Katherine
S
he said that her name was Katherine, Kan-si-ren, sounds in Chinese like “Kill-a-dead-person.” Kill-a-dead-person was how I memorized her name.
Names are important to the Chinese because we believe a good name leads to a good life. I liked Katherine’s name, because it sounded so strange, so bold, and so ridiculous. My classmates liked her name too. Deep inside us we all wanted to be someone we were not. Katherine represented that to us, starting with her unusual name. Through her we saw a chance to rebel, to be anything other than Chinese. Our lips worked on pronouncing her name, Kill-a-dead-person, Kan-si-ren, Katherine, and the sound brought us satisfaction. It was not a hard name to pronounce, but we had to stretch our mouths into a yawning shape to get the sound right. Katherine, Kill-a-dead-person. It was stimulating. Katherine. We enjoyed saying it. We liked to think that her name smelled of hot
blood. We liked to imagine everything that came with the name. A story of the western world.