Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998)

An odd book, sometimes clunky, but which ultimately stuck with me. The clunkiness is fairly straightforward: it reads more like a series of novellas parodying familiar genres (the tourist novella, the road trip novella, the campus novel, the romantic comedy, the romantic farce). Each of them has its merits, and they do hold together, just, but the structure is very odd.

That said, the parody and satire on both West and East (and West-in-East and East-in-West) is great. I'm unsure of the commentators' attempts to turn the book into a kind of existentialist zeitgeist thing about "what it means to be a 20th century Chinese man". I'm very sure that readers of twentieth century Anglofiction will enjoy it, as will any academics anywhere at anytime.… (mere)

If this book had been written by a foreigner, the writer would have been accused of racism at worst, or cultural chauvinism at least. In reviewing it, I am conscious that I will lay myself open to the same charges because Qian Zhongshu sees many of the same features and voices many of the same criticisms that foreigners do about Chinese culture. Published in 1947 at the height of the civil war in China, Qian Zhongshu’s classic Chinese novel is an extended examination of Chinese mores and culture, in which that culture is subjected to a savage critique which is at once bitterly accurate and very funny...

Read the full review on The Lectern… (mere)