This volume offers a survey of Chinese Literature in the second half of the twentieth century. It has three goals: (1) to introduce the figures, works, movements, and debates that constitute the dynamics of Chinese literature from 1949 to the end of the century; (2) to depict the reality of Chinese cultural politics; and (3) to observe the historical factors behind the interplay of literary (post)modernities in the Chinese communities of the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas.
Pang-yuan Chi was born in Manchuria and came to Taiwan in 1947; she is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at National Taiwan University, and Editor-in-Chief of The Chinese PEN Quarterly. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at Indiana University and a Visiting Scholar at the Freie Universitat, Berlin. Her works include An Anthology of Contemporary Literature, Qiannian zhilei (Tears of a Thousand Years) and Wu jianjian sanle de shihou (When the fog is clearing up).
David Der-wei Wang received his Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has taught at National Taiwan University and Harvard University and is now Professor of Chinese Literature and Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Columbia University. His recent publications include Fictional Realism in 20th Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen, Xiaoshuo zhongguo (Narrating China, Ruhexiandai, Zeyang wenxue (The Making of the Modern, the Making of a Literature), and Fin-de-siecle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911.