Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 416 pages
- Published by: New Directions Publishing Corporation February 2004
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0811215520
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0811215527
-
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
- Weighs: 1.1 pounds
Product Review
An insightful and entertaining workgains resonance from its large and momentous backdrop of China in transition. (
The New York Review of Books, Pankaj Mishra)
Product Description
The greatest Chinese novel of the twentieth century.
Fortress Besieged is a classic of world literature, a masterpiece of parodic fiction that plays with Western literary traditions, philosophy, and middle-class Chinese society in the Republican era. Set on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, our hapless hero Fang Hung-chien (à la Emma Bovary), with no particular goal in life and with a bogus degree from a fake American university in hand, returns home to Shanghai. On the French liner home, he meets two Chinese beauties, Miss Su and Miss Pao. Qian writes, "With Miss Pao it wasn't a matter of heart or soul. She hadn't any change of heart, since she didn't have a heart." In a sort of painful comedy, Fang obtains a teaching post at a newly established university where the effete pseudo-intellectuals he encounters in academia become the butt of Qian's merciless satire. Soon Fang is trapped into a marriage of Nabokovian proportions of distress and absurdity.
Recalling Fielding's
Tom Jones in its farcical litany of misadventures and Flaubert's "style indirect libre,"
Fortress Besieged is its own unique feast of delights. The translators Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao have breathed life into the English translation.
Reader ReviewsThe first literature work I had read is <<Fortress Besieged>>.It took 3 or 4 night to finish it.Actually in that situation the stress of competion did not allowed me to spend extra time on "useless hobbies", what I did was ,waiting for 1 hour on the bed till all people in my family asleepe already.Then,Iturned a flashlight on,covered myself under the comforter,read the small printings hardly;Wasn't it funny?I usually falling sleep during my reading,and waken up at 5:45 in morning,started a normally borning day.......<<Fortress Besied>> had take me into the kingdom of Chinese elite literature,caused by Qian's witty tone, I entered another world in 1930's.It used to be ashamed for all Chinese ruled under Janpanese occupants,Goverment was also moved to safe place to avoid attacks.Certainly,elitists left their good life in big cities,followed the wave of "immigration",in someway ,become refugees.Even for those who newly back to China dreamed to be high class intelligentists were find a job in a brand new university in somewhere far away the city.Therefore,the characters such like Fang Hongjian were met each other, started a paradoxically embarracing journey to San lujian University......His way of life,reflected the most darkness inside a person with WEstern background.Since I opened this book,I couldn't to quit it,especially those fantastic details and WEster nhumors,In addition,the most remarkable part is the conflict between diffirent cultures. However this masterpiece was listed on forbidden books for many years when China ruled by Natioalist,because it scorned the rotteness of the rulers.Surely I enjoyed this book,I'd try to find the best fanciest words to describe the brilliance of Qian's writting.But I am not good at boasting. Instead,I sharing my <<Fortress Besieged>>complex with you.This might be helpful for you to judge it in a special view point.My crazy reading started at age 12,and now I am 15,continually taste any flovors of literature,<<fortress Besieged>> seems like an old friend,standed on tne highest level of the bookshelf,very easily to connect with my remeberanceof things past,it mentioned me a theme more complicate than life itself.
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