Cries In The Drizzle

Yu Hua’s beautiful, heartbreaking novel Cries in the Drizzle follows a young Chinese boy throughout his childhood and adolescence during the reign of Chairman Mao. The middle son of three, Sun Guanglin is constantly neglected ignored by his parents and his younger and older brother. Sent away at age six to live with another family, he returns to his parents’ house six years later on the same night that their home burns to the ground, making him even more a black sheep. Yet Sun Guanglin’s status as an outcast, both at home and in his village, places him in a unique position to observe the changing nature of Chinese society, as social dynamics — and his very own family — are changed forever under Communist rule. With its moving, thoughtful prose, Cries in the Drizzle is a stunning addition to the wide-ranging work of one of China’s most distinguished contemporary writers.

Through an analysis of a wide array of contemporary Chinese literature from inside and outside of China, this volume considers some of the ways in which China and Chineseness are understood and imagined. Using the central theme of the way in which literature has the potential to both reinforce and to undermine a national imaginary, the volume contains chapters offering new perspectives on well-known authors, from Jin Yucheng to Nobel Prize winning Mo Yan, as well as chapters focusing on authors rarely included in discussions of contemporary Chinese literature, such as the expatriate authors Larissa Lai and Xiaolu Guo. The volume is complemented by chapters covering more marginalized literary figures throughout history, such as Macau-born poet Yiling, the Malaysian-born novelist Zhang Guixing, and the ethnically Korean author Kim Hak-ch’ŏl. Invested in issues ranging from identity and representation, to translation and grammar, it is one of the few publications of its kind devoting comparable attention to authors from Mainland China, authors from Manchuria, Macau, and Taiwan, and throughout the global Chinese diaspora. Reading China Against the Grain: Imagining Communities is a rich resource of literary criticism for students and scholars of Chinese studies, sinophone studies, and comparative literature

Psychoanalysis in Social and Cultural Settings examines the theory and practice of psychoanalysis with patients who have experienced deeply traumatic experiences through war, forced migrations, atrocities and other social and cultural dislocations. The book is divided into three main sections covering terrorism, refugees and traumatisation, with another two focusing specifically on transcultural issues regarding establishing psychoanalysis in China and on research related to themes outlined in the book. Major key psychoanalytic themes run through the work, focusing on identity and the self, fundamentalism, resilience, dehumanisation, cultural differences and enactment. Offering key theory and clinical guidance for working with highly traumatised patients, this book will be essential for all psychoanalysts and therapists working with victims of terrorism, war and other deeply traumatic life events.

The focus of this study is coming of age in troubled Cultural Revolutionary times as portrayed in contemporary Chinese Bildungsroman fiction by Su Tong and Yu Hua, along with a comprehensive overview of the Bildungsroman in China and the west.

The depiction of personal and collective suffering in modern Chinese novels differs significantly from standard Communist accounts and most 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 scramble common conceptions of ChinaÕs modern development, deploying avant-garde narrative techniques from Latin American and Euro-American modernism to project a surprisingly Òun-ChineseÓ 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 and dark, raunchy comedy, these novels deeply reflect ChinaÕs turbulent 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 ChinaÕs industrialization and rise as a global power. This book casts ChinaÕs highbrow historical novels from the 1990s to the mid-2000s 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.

This book delves into the Chinese literary translation landscape over the last century, spanning critical historical periods such as the Cultural Revolution in the greater China region. Contributors from all around the world approach this theme from various angles, providing an overview of translation phenomena at key historical moments, identifying the trends of translation and publication, uncovering the translation history of important works, elucidating the relationship between translators and other agents, articulating the interaction between texts and readers and disclosing the nature of literary migration from Chinese into English. This volume aims at benefiting both academics of translation studies from a dominantly Anglophone culture and researchers in the greater China region. Chinese scholars of translation studies will not only be able to cite this as a reference book, but will be able to discover contrasts, confluence and communication between academics across the globe, which will stimulate, inspire and transform discussions in this field.

Tracking ideas of the child in Chinese society across the twentieth century, Kate Foster places fictional children within the story of the nation in a study of tropes and themes which range from images of strength and purity to the murderous and amoral.

From the acclaimed author of Brothers and To Live: thirteen audacious stories that resonate with the beauty, grittiness, and exquisite irony of everyday life in China. Yu Hua’s narrative gifts, populist voice, and inimitable wit have made him one of the most celebrated and best-selling writers in China. These flawlessly crafted stories—unflinching in their honesty, yet balanced with humor and compassion—take us into the small towns and dirt roads that are home to the people who make China run. In the title story, a shopkeeper confronts a child thief and punishes him without mercy. “Victory” shows a young couple shaken by the husband’s infidelity, scrambling to stake claims to the components of their shared life. “Sweltering Summer” centers on an awkward young man who shrewdly uses the perks of his government position to court two women at once. Other tales show, by turns, two poor factory workers who spoil their only son, a gang of peasants who bully the village orphan, and a spectacular fistfight outside a refinery bathhouse. With sharp language and a keen eye, Yu Hua explores the line between cruelty and warmth on which modern China is—precariously, joyfully—balanced. Taken together, these stories form a timely snapshot of a nation lit with the deep feeling and ready humor that characterize its people. Already a sensation in Asia, certain to win recognition around the world, Yu Hua, in Boy in the Twilight, showcases the peerless gifts of a writer at the top of his form.