Convinced no woman could ever love him, Gallimard has resigned himself to a passionless marriage of convenience with his wife, Helga.Īttending a performance at the German ambassador’s house one night, he meets a Chinese opera star named Song Liling.
He is hapless, awkward, and unimpressive. He is a junior diplomat living in Beijing, China - a tenuous situation, given the increasing extremism of the Chinese Communist Party. The narrative begins in 1960, when he is thirty-nine years old. Through a series of flashbacks and imagined conversations, Gallimard tells audience his story. Gallimard tells his audience that he has loved “the Perfect Woman.” Though he embraces his status as an object of ridicule, Gallimard confesses that he has been searching desperately for a way to tell his story that will redeem its pathetic ending, reunite him with the woman he has lost, and teach those people who laugh at him to understand him. It is 1988, and Gallimard introduces himself to his audience as a “celebrity” - a man who is known and laughed about all over the world.
In a prison on the outskirts of Paris, Rene Gallimard is serving a sentence for treason.
0 kommentar(er)
