China′s Avant-Garde Fiction

“China’s Avant-Garde Fiction deals with the 1987 emergence of the Avant-Garde School of fiction writing. The short fiction pieces here pay tribute to mad homicidal instincts, irrational impulses, taboo thought and words, writing outside of a political context (or debunking the political status quo). . . . Jing Wang’s China’s Avant-Garde Fiction offers a variety of thought-provoking . . . writings by many of China’s best-known modernist writers.” - , Pacific Reader

“Filled with images, hallucinations, myths, mental puzzles, and the fantastic, the contemporary experimental fiction of the Chinese avant-garde represents a genre unlike any other. Jing Wang has collected fourteen examples of this new school of writing that gained prominence in the late 1980s. Contributors include Ge Fei, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Can Xue, Bei Cun, Sun Ganlu, and Ma Yuan. Enriched by the work of a dozen distinguished translators, the stories present an aesthetic experience that may have outraged many revolutionary-minded readers in China, but one that also serves as a dramatic manifesto of the making of a postrevolutionary literary sensibility obsessed with form and the pleasure of storytelling.” - , Translation Review

“The book contains 14 expertly translated stories by seven contemporary Chinese writers. . . . In her eloquent, . . . stimulating, and thought-provoking . . . introductory essay Jing Wang provides the historical and ideological framework for interpreting the stories in terms of their ‘antihumanist’ stance. . . . [T]his is a most valuable and useful volume, to be recommended to anyone interested in Chinese literature and cultural critique. Used on its own or as a companion volume to Jing Wang’s recent, much acclaimed monograph High Culture Fever, it will make excellent course material for Chinese as well as comparative literature studies.” - , The China Quarterly

“The translations are of high quality. . . . This literature is an essential and startling moment in modern Chinese literary history, or indeed modern Chinese history; and this anthology would make an excellent textbook.” - Jingyuan Zhang , Journal of Asian and African Studies

“This well-translated anthology . . . should interest professors and graduate students of contemporary Chinese literature.” - Philip F. Williams , Choice

“This collection is bound to create an impact on the direction of research in Chinese literary studies. And Jing’s perceptive discussion of this school’s artistic and historical relevances is likely to become standard reference for future explorations of recent literary developments in China.” - Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang, University of Texas at Austin