The Dissident

Author: Nell Freudenberger

Publisher: HarperCollins

The dissident in question is Yuan Zhao, a Chinese performance artist whose bizarre, politically subversive work has recently drawn the jaded gaze of Western academics and collectors. Yuan Zhao is imported to L.A. (still handy cultural shorthand for all that is superficial about America) to teach at the kind of private high school that has “visiting scholars” and finds himself exiled in Beverly Hills with a crisis-ridden host family and a classroom of uninterested pupils whose failed attempts at art tackle weighty subjects like outer space, time travel and “France.” As Freudenberger tells the story of the dissident’s growing involvement with his hosts and students, she deftly flashes back to his life in Beijing’s East Village art scene during the years leading up to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

These descriptions of life and art on the fringes of Chinese society are among the book’s freshest and most interesting sections, but Freudenberger’s writing is witty and whip-smart throughout. In this, her first novel, she clearly wants to squeeze in course loads of Big Topics like art and authorship, translation and exile, but the result may be a bit too ambitious even for 400 plus pages. We’re introduced to too many characters, plot strands and themes, only to watch them fall to the wayside unresolved as the novel slowly zooms in on the dissident and his emerging love interest. In the end though, there’s nothing wrong with a love story, and Freudenberger has written a thoroughly enjoyable one at that.