Novel
Officialdom Unmasked
官場現形記
Li Boyuan · 1903
Synopsis
In China at the end of the Qing, a series of juxtaposed episodes presents officials, men who aspire to an office, others moved only by money, and women caught up in their affairs. From one story to the next, one character passes the baton to the next, and more than eight hundred figures parade by in this way. Taken together, these episodes paint a picture of a corrupt administration, which the author wanted to expose to the public.
Context
The novel was serialised in the Shijie fanhua bao from April 1903 to June 1905, and today has sixty chapters. Lu Xun calls it unfinished: the author had planned one hundred and twenty, in ten parts of twelve chapters. Others attribute the last twelve to a friend, Ouyang Juyuan, who is said to have added them after the author's death. Lu Xun compares its construction, in juxtaposed narratives, to that of an eighteenth-century satirical novel and places it in the satire characteristic of the last years of the empire. An abridged English translation appeared in Hong Kong in 2001.
Who it is for
A long novel made up of episodes of a few pages, which can be read separately; no French translation has appeared.
Prizes and reception
Placed by Lu Xun among the exposé novels of the late Qing; Donald Holoch sees in it a masterpiece of satire.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.