Novel
Vignettes from the Late Ch'ing: Bizarre Happenings Eyewitnessed over Two Decades
二十年目睹之怪現狀
Wu Jianren · 1903
Synopsis
A young man who calls himself “Nine Deaths and One Life” tells of twenty years of his existence. After his father's death, he enters the service of a former schoolmate, Wu Jizhi, an official in Nanjing, and serves him in particular as a front man for the business that his post forbids him to run. His affairs take him from Nanjing to Shanghai, and along the way he gathers, from the mouths of various people, the stories of officials, scholars and merchants that make up the bulk of the book.
Context
The novel first appeared, from 1903 to 1905, in the monthly review that Liang Qichao published in Yokohama, then in volumes from booksellers in Shanghai; it has one hundred and eight chapters. A single narrator serves as the thread and reports, besides what he has seen, what others have told him: nearly two hundred stories of “strange things” follow one another in this way. Lu Xun places it among the novels of denunciation of the late Qing, while reproaching it with exaggerating the evil. Shih Shun Liu gave an English version of it in Hong Kong in 1975.
Who it is for
A very long novel, made up of short stories that can be read in order or by dipping in; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Renditions counts it among the greatest novels of the late Qing, whereas Lu Xun reproached it for its excesses.
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