Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie, 184 pages

This short work of fiction is great for book clubs and would work for a Banned Book Week discussion.  In 1970s China, the narrator and his friend are sent to the countryside to be "re-educated," and wiped clean of their bourgeois sensibilities.  But there they find a treasure trove of banned, Western fiction that changes their lives and that of the young seamstress they try to "civilize" using the books.  It's a short book, so there's not a whole lot more to say about it- but after reading it, there is a lot of substance for discussion with a book group.