|
This is the best treatment yet of the contemporary PRC historical novel.... Highly recommended. David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University:Jeffrey C. Kinkley has done magnificent work in rethinking the meaning and function of historical dynamics and spatial imaginary in the context of dystopia. He looks into sources drawn from PRC fiction since the New Era, identifies generic and conceptual contestations, and teases out the radical elements in the debate about civil society. Both historically engaged and theoretically provocative, Kinkley's book is a most important source for anyone interested in Chinese and comparative literature and cultural studies. Sylvia Lin, author of Representing Atrocity in Taiwan:In yet another impressive work with impeccable research, Kinkley displays his nuanced understanding of modern and contemporary China through highly readable prose and broad reference to similar works in world literature. A must-read! Michel Hockx, SOAS, University of London:Following on from his path-breaking studies of contemporary Chinese legal fiction and political novels, Jeffrey Kinkley in his new book. Visions of Dystopia once again displays impressive mastery of a body of Chinese writing that provides us with a unique perspective on the country's turbulent recent history. Engaging with dystopian traditions in literature from South America and elsewhere, Kinkley expertly brings out the uniqueness of the Chinese authors' handling of the past to comment on the present and the future. Identifying himself as a historian, Kinkley at the same time has been and continues to be one of the world's leading scholars of Chinese litera The depiction of personal and collective suffering in modern Chinese novels differs significantly from standard Communist accounts and many Eastern and Western historical narratives. Writers such as Yu Hua, Su Tong, Wang Anyi, Mo Yan, Han Shaogong, Ge Fei, Li Rui, and Zhang Wei skew and scramble common conceptions of China's modern development, deploying avant-garde narrative techniques from Latin American and Euro-American modernism to project a surprisingly "un-Chinese" dystopian vision and critical view of human culture and ethics.The epic narratives of modern Chinese fiction make rich use of magical realism, surrealism, and unusual treatments of historical time. Also featuring graphic depictions of sex and violence, as well as dark, raunchy comedy, these novels reflect China's recent history re-presenting the overthrow of the monarchy in the early twentieth century and the resulting chaos of revolution and war the recurring miseries perpetrated by class warfare during the dictatorship of Mao Zedong and the social dislocations caused by China's industrialization and rise as a global power. This book casts China's highbrow historical novels from the late 1980s to the first decade of the twenty-first century as a distinctively Chinese contribution to the form of the global dystopian novel and, consequently, to global thinking about the interrelations of utopia and dystopia
|
