ABSTRACT
This volume gathers personal reflections on life and literature by 44 of China's leading authors. It aims to illustrate how Chinese society and its creative writing have supported, competed and fought with each other for the past 40 years and more. Much of what is revealed here is mundane, but the pressure of bringing art to social and political causes, indeed the universal pressure to survive, forges this collection into a very human document. The strengths and weaknesses of these essays offer a window on those of modern Chinese literature itself. Realism was the favoured literary doctrine of the day, and, reflecting this, most of these essays speak for themselves - about war, revolution, betrayal and commitment.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|166 pages
Literature from the People's Republic
chapter |6 pages
Reflections in the Hot Springs at Hakone
chapter |5 pages
After Twenty Years of Silence We Lick Our Wounds
chapter |12 pages
The First Half of My Life
chapter |8 pages
Is Reportage to Be Excluded from the Realm of Literature?
chapter |8 pages
We Must Not Forget Our Historical Roots
part II|10 pages
Without a Regime or a Regimen: Entertainment Fiction
chapter |8 pages
Against the Authors of “Foreign Books in Chinese Language”
part III|86 pages
Chinese Literature from Taiwan
chapter |7 pages
On the Miseries of Writers in American Exile
chapter |6 pages
Father's Writings Have Been Republished
chapter |8 pages
Native Literature as a Stimulus for Social Change
chapter |8 pages
Protest of a Woman Author against Reckless Accusations
part IV|48 pages
The Republican Era Revisited
