The Strike

As a stylist, Thomlinson aims high, with goals that recall modernists such as James Joyce and Virginia Wolfe: writers concerned with the complex juxtaposition of interior thought and external reality. The novel's pyrotechnic language serves primarily as a window into the minds of his characters. -- LA Review of BooksGround breaking and important...should become one of the most analyzed techniques in literary fiction.-- Experimental WritingThis unconventional text while reminiscent of the Dadaists word games, experimental poetry, and William Burroughs's work using cut-ups is, in the end, a unique entity unto itself...-- Ray FracalossyThe Strike vividly explores a season of crisis in the lives of Old Yu and Little Xu, two outsiders in an ice-bound Chinese border town riven by an illegal strike. Caught up in the upheaval, guilt-ridden Old Yu embarks on a reckless journey to find the rebellious woman he betrayed, before it's too late. Meanwhile, lonely young drifter Little Xu enters into a dangerous relationship with a stranger on the run.The Strike stands out as a novel that is both experimental and dealing realistically with real world events in an engaged way. The new use of syntax the novel pioneers is a method the author, a translator, uses to shake up the synapses of readers in a way that can deliver new perspectives on the nature of reality. Linguists and psychologists, literary critics and readers will find this to be a stunning new revelation of possibility.