The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature

by Joseph S.M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt

Book Overview

This comprehensive reference work covers a range of genres from contemporary China, both before and after the Communist revolution of 1949. It includes the best short fiction, poetry and essays from... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231080034
• ISBN13: 9780231080033
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 726 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Extensive

These comments are for the first edition of the book, which was published in 1995, not the second/revised version, which came out in 2007. The book was the largest collection of modern Chinese literature that I've seen, and must've taken some years to compile. It contained 152 works by 83 authors. There were 50 short stories (42 authors), 71 poems (30 authors), and 30 essays plus 1 excerpt from an autobiography (11 authors). The short fiction comprised about 70% of the book, poetry 10% and essays/excerpt 20%. There were 88 works from the 20th century from mainland China (47 writers), 58 from Taiwan (31 writers, including émigrés), and 6 works from Hong Kong from the 1970s and after (5 writers). Seventeen of the authors were women. The works were divided into short fiction, poetry and essays, with each of these divided further into pieces from 1918-49 (early modern), 1949-76 (post-"Liberation") and since 1976 (post-Mao). The middle period, 1949-76, was represented almost entirely by Taiwanese, including émigrés from the mainland. This was because most of the literature from the mainland during that time, intended mainly to promote the new society under the Communist Party, was judged unable to stand inclusion on artistic merit. The one exception was a poem by Mu Dan published at the period's end, in 1976. The short fiction was by far the most enjoyable section, with stories by the early moderns to 1949 (including Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen, Ba Jin, Zhang Tianyi, Ding Ling, Wu Zuxiang, Xiao Hong, Zhang Ailing), writers from Taiwan from the 1960s to 1990 (Zhu Xining, Bai Xianyong, Li Yongping, Yuan Qiongqiong, Li Ang, Xiao Sa, Zhu Tianwen), and mainland writers after 1976 to 1991 (Qiao Dianyun, Wang Meng, Li Rui, Can Xue, Chen Cun, Mo Yan, Yu Hua and Su Tong). No writer besides Lu Xun was presented in any depth, but the coverage was broad. There were many strong works: humorous, ironic, naturalistic and humanistic, the best of which were written with compassion, powerful imagery and historical insight. Before 1949, there were a narrator's description of the decline of a store that couldn't shift with the times (Lao She), a ferocious depiction of oppression by landlords (Wu Zuxiang), a compassionate story about the effects of prejudice (Xiao Hong) and a wry description of a brief encounter in Shanghai (Eileen Chang). After 1976, there was a fascinating story showing how the treatment of an ancient artifact reflected the changing political currents of the times (Qiao Dianyun) and a piece showing unusually keen psychological insight into one man's behavior (Chen Cun). On Taiwan, there were stories with great descriptive power (Li Yongping), sometimes with allusive symbolism (Zhu Xining), reminiscences about the past (Bai Xianyong), and careful depictions of a relationship (Yuan Qiongqiong, Xiao Sa) and contemporary decadence (Zhu Tianwen). Missed in this prose section were a story from Liu Xianwu, one of the earliest post-Mao wr