Wang in Love and Bondage: Three Novellas by Wang Xiaobo »

At Fontbonne University, Hongling Zhang teaches fiction writing and has published short stories in both Chinese and English, and Jason Sommer is Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence. He has published three collections of poetry, including The Man Who Sleeps in my Office.

The first English translation of work by Wang Xiaobo, one of the most important writers of the twentieth-century China.

Publishers Weekly

Reading popular, irreverent Chinese essayist and novelist Wang, who died in 1997 at 44, can feel like being held upside down particularly during the zingy sex scenes. Characters cultivate an artful irrelevance to circumvent official stricture, and fail most every time. In the first work, "2015," the narrator's uncle, Wang Er, is a painter without a government permit to paint; his paintings are so stridently fractal that they make people dizzy. Sent for re-education, he readily admits his stupidity, but is undone when a female guard takes a very twisted interest in him. "The Golden Age" concerns another Wang Er: a 21-year-old, well-endowed Beijing student sent to the Yunan countryside during the Mao period. There, he runs off with a married doctor. Told to confess on returning, Wang, ironically, becomes a writer, as his superiors insist on more and more pornographic detail in every revised version of his confessions. The slighter final story, "East Palace, West Palace," relates a story about a policeman who falls in love with a bisexual cross-dresser. Wang's deeply convincing novellas will certainly please the readers who have enjoyed recent Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian's novel, Soul Mountain.(Mar.)

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Introduction     vii
2015     1
The Golden Age     61
East Palace, West Palace     119