The title, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, may sound like a children's book, but for the author, it is more like a fairy tale come true. As a teenager, Dai Sijie was sent to a remote village in China to undergo re-education during that country's Cultural Revolution. It wasn't until he had lived in Paris for a number of years that the time was right to tell the story. His first novel, the story of two boys exiled to a small mountain village who discover a stash of Western classics in translation, became an immediate bestseller in France and was sold for publication in 25 countries. Knopf brought the book out here in September with a modest first printing, but steady word-of-mouth and spirited reviews have brought the book back to press for a fourth time, bringing the total to 41,500 copies. Booksellers are jumping on the handselling bandwagon and helping to drive sales. And since all fairy tales need a happy ending, the author has returned to the mountains of China to direct the film version of his own very successful little novel.