Excerpt: "The Apprentice," by Zhu Wen
This week our featured book is The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan: More Stories of China, by Zhu Wen, translated by Julia Lovell. Today, we have an excerpt from one of the eponymous stories of the collection: “The Apprentice,” a tale of the comic vexations of life in a more-or-less planned economy, as an enthusiastic young graduate is over-exercised by his table-tennis-fanatic bosses, deprived of sleep by gambling-addicted colleagues, and stuffed with hard-boiled eggs by an overzealous landlady.
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