This time, Pierre Boulle appears on the scene, as a writer who has the luck, when he runs out of ideas, to meet a strange hundred-year-old man from the kingdom of Shandung, somewhere
between india and china. The stories from this kingdom are the material of the book. The general tone is to a delightful mix of gravity and mischieviousness and the stories are subtely
clever. Why does the queen, whose son is suffering from a serious heart disease, refuse to pardon a young criminal ? And how will the criminal's mother compete in motherly love with
the sovereign ? This reading is edifying. How, in prediction of a rise in criminality in the kingdom of Shandung, did the minister of statistics and all other ministers, even the minister of quality of life, plan a phenomenal rationnalization of capital executions ? How will the beautiful and slender dancer Simar, sentenced to death for having had an abortion,
will try by any mean to get pregnant again, and what will be her ironic and sad end ? How will the desperate person who phoned the "Compassion Service" find out the great sense
of comfort this organization provides ? Will he become an anonymous comforter himself, as there are anonymous alcoholics ?
How will new Doctor Jekyll, who rediscovered the secret of Stevenson's hero, will take great moral caution before his experiment in order not to create an awful Mr Hyde ? How will his personality split to create an angelic Mr Edyh and in what kind of trouble will this get him into ?
This time, Pierre Boulle appears on the scene, as a writer who has the luck, when he runs out of ideas, to meet a strange hundred-year-old man from the kingdom of Shandung, somewhere
between india and china. The stories from this kingdom are the material of the book. The general tone is to a delightful mix of gravity and mischieviousness and the stories are subtely
clever. Why does the queen, whose son is suffering from a serious heart disease, refuse to pardon a young criminal ? And how will the criminal's mother compete in motherly love with
the sovereign ? This reading is edifying. How, in prediction of a rise in criminality in the kingdom of Shandung, did the minister of statistics and all other ministers, even the minister of quality of life, plan a phenomenal rationnalization of capital executions ? How will the beautiful and slender dancer Simar, sentenced to death for having had an abortion,
will try by any mean to get pregnant again, and what will be her ironic and sad end ? How will the desperate person who phoned the "Compassion Service" find out the great sense
of comfort this organization provides ? Will he become an anonymous comforter himself, as there are anonymous alcoholics ?
How will new Doctor Jekyll, who rediscovered the secret of Stevenson's hero, will take great moral caution before his experiment in order not to create an awful Mr Hyde ? How will his personality split to create an angelic Mr Edyh and in what kind of trouble will this get him into ?