{"product_id":"little-reunions-isbn-9781681371276","title":"Little Reunions","description":"\u003cb\u003eA best-selling, autobiographical depiction of class privilege, bad romance, and political intrigue during World War II in China.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eNow available in English for the first time, Eileen Chang’s dark romance opens with Julie, living at a convent school in Hong Kong on the eve of the Japanese invasion. Her mother, Rachel, long divorced from Julie’s opium-addict father, saunters around the world with various lovers. Recollections of Julie’s horrifying but privileged childhood in Shanghai clash with a flamboyant, sometimes incestuous cast of relations that crowd her life. Eventually, back in Shanghai, she meets the magnetic Chih-yung, a traitor who collaborates with the Japanese puppet regime. Soon they’re in the throes of an impassioned love affair that swings back and forth between ardor and anxiety, secrecy and ruin. Like Julie’s relationship with her mother, her marriage to Chih-yung is marked by long stretches of separation interspersed with unexpected little reunions. Chang’s emotionally fraught, bitterly humorous novel holds a fractured mirror directly in front of her own heart.\"Originally written in 1976 but not published until 2009 in China, this is a welcome discovery from a writer who is only now, more than two decades after her death, coming into her own.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Before Joan Didion, there was Eileen Chang. . . . Chang combined Didion’s glamour and sensibility with the terrific wit of Evelyn Waugh. She could, with a single phrase, take you hostage.” —Jamie Fisher, \u003ci\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Her writing . . . is cinematically crisp, and phantasmagorical.... She had the lunatic sensibilities of Marc Chagall, married to a Henri Matisse–like elegance.” —Ilaria Maria Sala, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eThis intricate novel follows a young Chinese woman, known as Julie, who comes of age during World War II….[it] provides an intimate glimpse into an alluring world, rife with vivid detail and characters\u003ci\u003e.\"  —Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eEileen Chang \u003c\/b\u003e(1920–1995)  was born into an aristocratic family in Shanghai. Her father, deeply  traditional in his ways, was an opium addict; her mother, partly  educated in England, was a sophisticated woman of cosmopolitan tastes.  Their unhappy marriage ended in divorce, and Chang eventually ran away  from her father—who had beaten her for defying her stepmother, then\u003cbr\u003elocked  her in her room for nearly half a year. Chang studied literature at the  University of Hong Kong, but the Japanese attack on the city in 1941  forced her to return to occupied Shanghai, where she was able to publish  the stories and essays (collected in two volumes, \u003ci\u003eRomances\u003c\/i\u003e, 1944, and \u003ci\u003eWritten on Water\u003c\/i\u003e,  1945) that soon made her a literary star. In 1944 Chang married Hu  Lancheng, a Japanese sympathizer whose sexual infidelities led to their  divorce three years later. The rise of Communist influence made it  increasingly difficult for Chang to continue living in Shanghai; she  moved to Hong Kong in 1952, then immigrated to the United States three  years later. She remarried (an American, Ferdinand Reyher, who died in  1967) and held various posts as a writer in residence; in 1969 she  obtained a more permanent position as a researcher at Berkeley. Two  novels, both commissioned in the 1950s by the United States Information  Service as anti-Communist propaganda, \u003ci\u003eThe Rice Sprout Song\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eNaked Earth\u003c\/i\u003e (the latter now available as an NYRB Classic), were followed by a third, \u003ci\u003eThe Rouge of the North\u003c\/i\u003e (1967), which expanded on her celebrated early novella “The Golden  Cangue.” Chang continued writing essays and stories in Chinese as well  scripts for Hong Kong films, and began work on an English translation of  the famous Qing novel \u003ci\u003eThe Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai\u003c\/i\u003e. In  spite of the tremendous revival of interest in her work that began in  Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1970s, and that later spread to mainland  China, Chang became ever more reclusive as she grew older. Eileen Chang  was found dead in her Los Angeles apartment in September 1995. In 2006,  NYRB Classics published \u003ci\u003eLove in a Fallen City\u003c\/i\u003e, an original collection of her short fiction. The following year, \u003ci\u003eLust, Caution\u003c\/i\u003e, a film adaptation of Chang’s 1979 novella, directed by Ang Lee, was released.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJane Weizhen Pan\u003c\/b\u003e has collaborated with Martin Merz on translations of many works by  contemporary Chinese writers. She first encountered Eileen Chang’s work  as a high-school student in China and has been a devoted reader of her  writing since. She is based in Melbourne, Australia, where her research  focuses on early Chinese translations of English classics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMartin Merz\u003c\/b\u003e studied Chinese at Melbourne University and later received an MA in  applied translation in Hong Kong. He moved to Asia in 1980 and has  worked in greater China ever since. In addition to his co-translations  with Jane Weizhen Pan, he translated the modern Peking opera \u003ci\u003eMulian Rescues His Mother\u003c\/i\u003e, which was performed at the Hong Kong Fringe in the early 1990s.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302408376549,"sku":"NP9781681371276","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681371276.jpg?v=1767731561","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/little-reunions-isbn-9781681371276","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}