Yunte Huang, Editor
Guggenheim fellow and Edgar Award–winning author Huang (Charlie Chan) edits and does much of the translation in this superb and suitably massive compendium of Chinese literature that stretches from the downfall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 to the present. In his introduction, Huang calls this a “search for the soul of modern China.” That search takes readers from the sometimes giddy works of the republican era through the constrained literature of Maoist times to the broad range of styles in the post-Mao period. Among the many novel excerpts are selections from Nobel laureate Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum, full of vibrant colors, odors, sounds, and action, and from Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian’s thoughtful Soul Mountain. Continue reading