Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch

Having enchanted readers on two continents withBalzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress,Dai Sijie now produces a rapturous and uproarious collision of East and West, a novel about the dream of love and the love of dreams. Fresh from 11 years in Paris studying Freud, bookish Mr. Muo returns to China to spread the gospel of psychoanalysis. His secret purpose is to free his college sweetheart from prison. To do so he has to get on the good side of the bloodthirsty Judge Di, and to accomplishthathe must provide the judge with a virgin maiden. This may prove difficult in a China that has embraced western sexual mores along with capitalismespecially since Muo, while indisputably a romantic, is no ladies' man. Tender, laugh-out-loud funny, and unexpectedly wise,Mr. Muo's Travelling Couchintroduces a hero as endearingly inept as Inspector Clouseau and as valiant as Don Quixote.

Dai Sijie is a Chinese-born filmmaker and novelist who has lived and worked in France since 1984. His first novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, was an overnight sensation; it spent twenty-three weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.