Sampson tried to insult servants of the enemy household by biting his

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serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.

b. and i with my fighting heart, i thought at

first / to steal up to him [the cyclops].   the cyclops’ actions first odysseus to take

action after killing his men and trapping in the cave revealed his intent of

doing them harm.   that is why odysseus

blinded him to enable him and his men to escape.

mark twain, real name samuel langhorne clemens, was an american writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. among his novels are the adventures of tom sawyer and its sequel, the adventures of huckleberry finn, the latter often called "the great american novel". wikipedia