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 familys expense, Fang returns to Shanghai armed with a bogus degree from a fake university. On the ocean liner back, Fangs life becomes deeply entangled with those of two Chinese beautiesMiss Su and Miss Pao. Qian writes, With Miss Pao it wasnt a matter of heart or soul. She hadnt any change of heart, since she didnt 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.
Arvustused
"That the novel existed at all seemed a miracle. Its like War and Peace without the war." -- Yiyun Li, from the Introduction "Insightful and entertaining." -- Jonathan Spence - The New York Review of Books "Ribald and sardonic, Fortress Besieged has something for everyone. Its funny, poignant, and ruthlessly observant. Qians descriptions are wickedly precise." -- Julia Lovell - The Guardian
The fiction writer, essayist, editor, and poet Qian Zhongshu (19101998) was one of Chinas 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. 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 was a Professor of English at Shippensburg University and the translator of Ba Jins Cold Nights and Li Yus Twelve Towers. Jonathan D. Spence (19362021) was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, where he taught for more than forty years. He was awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The Search for Modern China won the Lionel Gelber Award and the Kiriyama Book Prize. The acclaimed author of ten books and the Director of Princetons Creative Writing Department, Yiyun Li has won a MacArthur, a Guggenheim and the PEN/Faulkner, PEN/Hemingway, and PEN/Jean Stein Awards.
