Fortress Besieged
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The greatest Chinese novel of the twentieth century, Fortress Besieged is a classic of world literature and a masterpiece of parodic fiction
Set on the eve of the Sino-Japanese war, Fortress Besieged recounts the exuberant misadventures of its hapless hero Fang Hung-chien. After aimlessly studying in Europe at his family’s expense, Fang returns to Shanghai armed with a bogus degree from a fake university. On the ocean liner back, Fang’s life becomes deeply entangled with those of 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.” When he does finally make it home, he obtains a teaching post at a newly established university, encounters effete pseudo-intellectuals, and falls into a disastrous marriage of Nabokovian heights of distress and absurdity. A glorious tale of calamity, disillusionment, love, war, and wedded unbliss, Fortress Besieged was acclaimed by C. T. Hsia as “the most delightful and carefully wrought novel in modern Chinese literature.”Qian Zhongshu
The fiction writer, essayist, editor, and poet Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998) was one of China’s foremost “scholar-novelists.” With a mastery of Chinese, English, Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish, and Italian, Qian is seen by many as the last link in an unbroken chain of geniuses stretching back to Confucius. In 1935, he passed his examinations with the highest score in history. He wrote landmark texts on classical Chinese literature as well as short stories, poems, essays, and a second unfinished novel, Heart of the Artichoke, which was lost in the wartime mail.
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Jeanne Kelly
Translated by
Jeanne Kelly received her B.A. in Russian at Indiana University and her M.A. in Chinese from the University of Wisconsin.
Nathan K. Mao
Translated by
Nathan K. Mao was a Professor of English at Shippensburg University and the translator of Ba Jin’s Cold Nights and Li Yu’s Twelve Towers.
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