{"product_id":"written-on-water-isbn-9781681375762","title":"Written on Water","description":"\u003cb\u003eNow back in print, these witty, insightful ssays on fashion, cinema, wartime, and everyday life demonstrate why Eileen Chang was and is a major icon of twentieth-century Chinese literature.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEileen Chang is one of the most celebrated modern Chinese novelists and  essayists of the twentieth century. First published in 1944, and just as  beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water  collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and  her life as a writer and woman in wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong. With  her vibrant yet meditative style and her sly, sophisticated humor, Chang  writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime  volunteers, and of her own experiences as a part-time nurse. She also  turns her thoughts to Chinese cinema, the aims of the writer, Peking  Opera, Shanghainese food, culture, and fashion, all the while upending  prevalent attitudes toward women and painting the self-portrait of a  daring and cosmopolitan woman bent on questioning pieties and enjoying  the pleasures of modernity, even as the world convulses in war and a  revolution looms. The book includes illustrations by the author.\"Chang's constant, vivid presence in these essays allows the reader to step wholly into her mind—a collage of the universal and the personal, the minute and the infinite.\" —Daljinder Johal, \u003ci\u003eAsymptote Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of the most anticipated books of 2023.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Millions\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Original, memorable and unlike anything else that has come from the era. A fine contribution to Chinese letters in translation.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Daily life, human interactions, and fashion are—particularly for 1940s China—considered female topics, and if Eileen Chang has any political dreams, they are for a space in which women’s problems can be accepted and considered.” —\u003ci\u003eRain Taxi Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eWritten on Water\u003c\/i\u003e showcases why . . . Eileen Chang still enjoys   an enormous popularity among readers, both in China and overseas.   Chang’s stylized depictions of Chinese manners and morals, her witty   inquiry into urban trivia, and her ‘celebration’ of historical   contingency are a tableau vivant of modern Chinese lives at their most   complex and fascinating.” —David Der-Wei Wang\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Before Joan Didion, there was Eileen Chang. A slender, dramatic woman with a taste for livid details and feverish colors, Chang combined Didion’s glamor 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“China’s Virginia Woolf.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\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\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“As Chang is gaining a growing number of readers in different languages, her work is being positioned where it always belonged, next to other world classics.” —Robert McG. Thomas, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eEileen Chang\u003c\/b\u003e (1920–1995) was a Chinese writer, born into an aristocratic family in Shanghai. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong until 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 and \u003ci\u003eWritten on Water\u003c\/i\u003e—that soon made her a literary star. After moving to the United States in the 1950s, Chang wrote the novels \u003ci\u003eNaked Earth\u003c\/i\u003e (available from NYRB Classics) and \u003ci\u003eThe Rice Sprout Song\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as essays and stories in Chinese and scripts for Hong Kong films. She is also the author of the NYRB Classics \u003ci\u003eLove in a Fallen City\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eLittle Reunions\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndrew F. Jones\u003c\/b\u003e is a literary translator and professor of Chinese at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of three books on modern Chinese music and was a recent Guggenheim fellow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNicole Huang\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor at the University of Hong Kong. Her recent work engages visual and auditory culture of contemporary China, with a forthcoming book called \u003ci\u003eLate Mao Soundscapes: Auditory Culture and Daily Practice of 1970s China\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304823148773,"sku":"NP9781681375762","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681375762.jpg?v=1767744621","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/written-on-water-isbn-9781681375762","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}