CRIPPLE MAH AND THE NEW ORDER (23 I pp.)—C. Y. Lee—Farrar, Straus & Cudahy ($3.95).
If any satire of the Mao regime is being written in China—not the likeliest of propositions—it cannot bear much resemblance to this burlesque by C. Y. Lee, the Chinese-American author of The Flower Drum Song. Lee's view is light, slight and frequently funny, but it is that of an established expatriate; it lacks the edge that defiance and fear give to a work whose author risks arrest. Cripple Mah, Lee's addlepated hero, is protected by his Schweikian stupidity from...