Literary Studies

As the first comprehensive study of Chinese fiction of the Cultural Revolution, this pioneering work explores the position of the literature of this turbulent period in the context of contemporary China. The book covers the choice of subject matter, authorship and readership of Cultural Revolution fiction. It analyses the characterization of heroes promoted in the literary and artistic field during this period. By comparing Cultural Revolution fiction with the fiction of the preceding period,...

Jumping Through Hoops is a collection of nine intense and dramatic stories that sheds new light on the experiences of Chinese women during the Second World War. Originally published in Chinese in 1945, as part of Xie Bingying's classic anthology 女作家自传选集 (Selected autobiographical writings by women writers), the extraordinary narratives reveal the writers' personal struggles during the years of turmoil between the Republican and Communist eras. Whether the contributors are internationally accl...

Madmen and Other Survivors: Reading Lu Xun’s Fiction puts the short stories written by this outstanding Chinese writer between 1918 and 1926 into a broad context of Modernism. The fiction of Lu Xun (1881–1936) deals with the China moving beyond the 1911 Revolution. He asks about the possibilities of survival, and what that means, even considering the possibility that madness might be a strategy by which that is possible. Such an idea calls identity into question, and Lu Xun is read here as a ...