Fiction from Modern China – serie

In altering chapers, the novel tells the stories of Sunamei, a young woman from a rural matriarchal community, and Lian Rui, a self-absorbed man who is also weary witness to the Cultural Revolution. Through his two protagonists, the author addresses themes of the repression and freedon of sexuality, the brutality of modernity, and the fluidity of gender roles as the novel moves hypnotically and inevitably toward a collision between two worlds.

This anthology draws out the nuances of old-school Chinese humanism in Lao She's short stories, displaying these farcical pieces in the colloquialisms of modern language. The stories showcase the varied facets of Lao She's talent and draw the reader into his world.

To travel through these stories is to cross a landscape of stunning beauty and terrific cruelty, where expectations are subverted, where moral certainties are shattered, where gorgeously wrought surfaces beguile at the same time that acts of incredible brutality horrify.It is no wonder that Yu Hua’s stories caused a sensation when they first appeared in the 1980s. His work represents a sophisticated and often disturbing revolution in the Chinese literary tradition, reminiscent of the fiction of modernists like Kafka, Kawabata, Borges, and Robbe-Grillet, but drawing inspiration from several strains of traditional Chinese narrative as well.This is the first collection of short fiction by Yu Hua to appear in English. It takes us on a haunting and harrowing journey from classical China through the Cultural Revolution and into the new era of economic reform, exploding along the way our preconceived notions of what Chinese literature and culture are all about in the 1990s.