{"product_id":"love-in-a-fallen-city-isbn-9781590171783","title":"Love in a Fallen City","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMasterful short works about passion, family, and human relationships by one of the greatest writers of 20th century China. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA New York Review Books Original\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” \u003ci\u003e–\u003cb\u003eThe New  York Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge  divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity.  She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines  often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now,  with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why she is so  revered by Chinese readers everywhere.\" \u003ci\u003e–\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAng Lee\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEileen Chang is one of the great  writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both  on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang’s achievement is her short fiction—tales  of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life.  Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine  an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics  and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of  Chinese literature. \u003ci\u003eLove in a Fallen City\u003c\/i\u003e, the first collection in English of this  dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision  of a modern master.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In lush and lavish style, the four novellas and two short stories in \u003ci\u003eLove in a Fallen  City \u003c\/i\u003eexplore the effects of war and westernization on her characters' domestic lives.   Chang establishes many oppositions---East vs. West, tradition vs. modernization,  spiritual love vs. physical love---and then artfully undermines them to reveal subtler  tensions.  The beauty of her fiction derives in a great part from its musical quality,  as translated from the Chinese by Karen S. Kingsbury and the author.\" –\u003ci\u003eThe New York  Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Money and the scramble to get it are at the center of many of  our best novels, and this is nowhere truer than in the work of Jane Austen. The financial  security that Austen's heroines are always chasing is so inextricably entangled with  courtship, love and marriage that one can lose sight of the pound notes (not to mention  the plantation slavery) behind the lilies, lace and wedding veils. This is never  the case with the world Eileen Chang presents in the tales that constitute \u003ci\u003eLove in  a Fallen City\u003c\/i\u003e. Think of her as Jane Austen with the gloves off.\" –\u003ci\u003eJapan Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This  collection of short fiction dating from the 1940s is set in Shanghai and Hong Kong.  And it's one tough, seductive little book as it tracks the fates of grasping, calculating  heroines who brim over with film-noir appeal…Seattle translator Karen S. Kingsbury  has done a stellar job of making Chang's prose read as lushly and acerbically in  English as it presumably does in Chinese.” –\u003ci\u003eSeattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"This posthumous collection  contains six vibrant stories that depict life in post-WWII China...Evocative and  vivid, Chang's stories bristle with equal parts passion and resentment.  YA: The  youthful characters will draw teens.\" –\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A Major Rediscovery.\" –Kirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The six stories in this dazzling introduction to Eileen Chang, one of China's most admired modern writers, will sweep you up with their wayward characters, shifting power dynamics, and lush sensory detail… [They] will leave you absolutely reeling.” —Powell’s Books \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003eChang died in 1995 in Los Angeles, having emigrated to the U.S. in 1955 at 35.  These six stories, most available in English for the first time, were published to  acclaim in China and Hong Kong in the '40s; they explore, bewitchingly, the myriad  ways love overcomes (or doesn't) the intense social constraints of time and place.  In the compact \"Sealed Off,\" Shanghai briefly shuts down in defense against a blockade,  and strangers on a tram allow their inner yearnings to surface, with consequences  at once momentous and static. In the layered title story, a couple taunt each other  with false estrangements as they fall in love, then are forced to confront one another  directly through wartime privations. The startling novella \"The Golden Cangue,\" told  with upstairs-downstairs shifts in perspective, fugues around a wife, resentful of  her disabled husband and reviled by his family, who seeks reassurance in opium. In  these eloquent tragedies, Chang plunges readers in medias res. She expertly burdens  her characters with failed dreams and stifled possibilities, leads them to push aside  the heavy curtains of family and convention, and then shows them a yawning emptiness.  Their different responses are brilliantly underplayed and fascinating.\" –\u003ci\u003ePublishers  Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (Starred Review)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut  open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled  modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as  her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature,  and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why  she is so revered by Chinese readers everywhere.\" –Ang Lee\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[O]ne of the most popular  Chinese writers of the 20th century and a woman who made a major contribution to  the cultural life of Shanghai.”–\u003ci\u003eShanghai Daily\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[Her] finely honed psychological  studies and precise language won her acclaim as a giant of modern Chinese literature…”\u003ci\u003e–The  New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“…the most gifted Chinese writer to emerge in the 40’s”–C.T. Hsia,  Columbia University\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Chang’s obsession with privacy made her known as the ‘Garbo  of Chinese letters,’ and photographs reveal a woman whose elegance and contemplative  introspection justify that title.  Nevertheless, from out of the frenzy of renown  that surrounded her, the sheer quality of Chang’s prose emerges clearly, and her  voice–raw, low, exquisitely modulated–has a sound like none other in the canon of  Chinese, or for that matter, American prose stylists.”–\u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Eileen Chang  is no doubt the most talented woman writer in 20th century China.”–David Der-wei  Wang, Harvard University\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEILEEN CHANG\u003c\/b\u003e (1920–1995) was born in Shanghai. In 1952 she migrated to Hong Kong  to work as a translator for the American News Agency. She fled Communist China for  the United States in 1956, never to return again. After living in New York, Chang  moved to California, where she was a prominent fiction writer, essayist, public intellectual,  and translator. In September 1995 she was found dead in her Los Angeles department.  Her works include \u003ci\u003eRomances\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Rice-Sprout Song: A Novel of Modern China\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe  Rouge of the North\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eKaren S. Kingsbury\u003c\/b\u003e taught English in Chonqing on the Whitman-in-China program, studied Chinese in Taipei and, for fourteen years, taught English language and literature at Tunghai University in Taichung. Her Columbia University doctoral dissertation was on Eileen Chang, and she has published previous translations of Chang’s essays and fiction in \u003ci\u003eRenditions\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature\u003c\/i\u003e. She also translated Eileen Chang's \u003ci\u003eHalf a Lifelong Romance\u003c\/i\u003e. She is currently a professor of International Studies at Chatham University.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303844729061,"sku":"NP9781590171783","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590171783.jpg?v=1767731874","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/love-in-a-fallen-city-isbn-9781590171783","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}