Sparrow Girl Review

Sparrow Girl review: The Sparrow Girl is a fable, based on a true historical event, that examines the consequences of upsetting the delicate ecological balance of the natural world.


'Sparrows are our enemies,' declared Chairman Mao, the communist ruler of China in the late 1950's. He ordered all citizens to repeatedly bang pots and set off firecrackers to frighten the small birds to death.


Thus began the Chinese populace's war on sparrows. The premise for the war seemed entirely reasonable and sound. 'Kill the sparrows. Sparrows won't eat the farmers' grain. Agricultural industry will boom.'


And the war was a great initial success. The sparrow population in China was almost completely eradicated within three days. But the war on sparrows quickly developed into an appalling ecological disaster. Without the sparrows to eat them, the locust population exploded and devoured most of the crops.


The result was a famine of biblical proportions which killed 40 million people. In a century notable for daft human behaviour and disaster, the Great Sparrow War shines as an inimitable beacon of human arrogance and folly.