Dai Sijie is a Chinese film director and writer, born in Fujian, China in 1954.
He was sent to a Chinese re-education camp as a teenager in the 1970’s during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, begun by Mao Zedong in 1966 against the educational elite, to absorb the ideas and attitudes of Mao’s regime. He describes this life experience in his novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. He has lived in France since immigrating from China to study art and film in 1984. His work is banned in China.
The films he has directed include Le temple de la montagne, La mangeur de lune, and Chine, ma douleur. He received the Prix Jean Vigo in 1989 for Chine, ma douleur; a special jury prize at the Prague Film Festival in 1994 for La mangeur de lune, and the Prix Femina for Le Complexe de Di in 2003.
Other writings include Le Onzieme (The Eleventh Child), Le Complexe de Di and Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch and Once on a Moonless Night.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress was originally written in French and published in France as Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise; it was translated by Ina Rilke and published in the United States by Knopf in 2001. It was his first novel. He wrote and directed a movie, released in 2002, that was based on the book.
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