9 classics to celebrate women in translation

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Reading lists

Half a Lifelong Romance

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From one of twentieth-century China's greatest writers and the author of Lust, Caution, this is an unforgettable story of a love affair set in 1930s Shanghai. 
 
Manzhen is a young worker in a Shanghai factory, where she meets Shijun, the son of wealthy merchants. Despite family complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together - until circumstances force them apart. When they are reunited after a separation of many years, can they start their relationship again? Or is it destined to be the romance of only half a lifetime? This affectionate and captivating novel tells the moving story of an enduring love affair, and offers a fascinating window onto Chinese life in the first half of the twentieth century. 
 
Eileen Chang was born in Shanghai in 1920. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to America in 1955 and died in Los Angeles in 1995. 
 
Karen S. Kingsbury taught and studied in Chinese-speaking cities for nearly two decades, and currently lives in Pennsylvania, USA. She has translated Love in a Fallen City for Penguin Classics, as well as other essays and stories by Chang. 
 
'A giant of modern Chinese literature' The New York Times 
 
'Eileen Chang is the fallen angel of Chinese literature' Ang Lee 
 
'A dazzling and distinctive fiction writer' New York Times Book Review 
 
'Chang's world is a stark and mysterious place where people strive to find their way in love but often fail under the pressures of family, tradition, and reputation' New Yorker

It took 46 years, but at long last English-language readers are now able to enjoy one of Eileen Chang's most popular works, Half a Lifelong Romance. A dramatic story of love, betrayal, opportunism and family oppression set in 1930s Shanghai, it is an enveloping, haunting and insightful read, rich in Chang's trademark passionate prose

Eileen Chang is the fallen angel of Chinese literature

A dazzling and distinctive fiction writer

Chang's world is a stark and mysterious place where people strive to find their way in love but often fail under the pressures of family, tradition, and reputation

Karen S. Kingsbury's capable new translation of the novel

Eileen Chang was born in Shanghai in 1920. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to America in 1955 and died in Los Angeles in 1995. 
 
Karen S. Kingsbury taught and studied in Chinese-speaking cities for nearly two decades, and currently lives in Pennsylvania, USA. She has translated Love in a Fallen City for Penguin Classics, as well as other essays and stories by Chang.

Traces of Love

Eileen Chang was born in 1920 in Shanghai. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation where she published two works, Romances (1944) and Written on Water (1945). These established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to Hong Kong in 1952 and to America in 1955 where she continued to write. Increasingly reclusive, she died in Los Angeles in 1995.

Written by one of the most lauded Chinese writers of the twentieth century, this bijou story focuses around the relationship between Mr and Mrs Mi and compares their bond of love with the sense of care they feel for the elderly Mrs Yang. A subtle examination of the fragile ties that bind us to those whom we love and those for whom we find ourselves caring along the way.

Red Rose, White Rose

Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was born into an aristocratic family in Shanghai. 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, Romances, 1944, and Written on Water, 1945) that soon made her a literary star. 
 
The rise of Communist influence made it increasingly difficult for Chang to continue living in Shanghai; she moved to Hong Kong in 1952, then emigrated to the United States three years later. 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. She died in Los Angeles in 1995.

There were two women in Zhenbao's life: one he called his white rose, the other his red rose. One was a spotless wife, the other a passionate mistress. Isn't that just how the average man describe a chaste widow's devotion to her husband's memory - as spotless, and passionate too? Maybe every man has had two such women - at least two. Marry a red rose and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is "moonlight in front of my bed." Marry a white rose, and before long she'll be a grain of sticky rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart. 
 
In Eileen Chang's eloquent and evocative novella, Zhenbao is a devoted son, a diligent worker, and 
guarded in love. But when he meets a friend's spoilt, spirited, desirable wife, he cannot resist her charms, or keep their relationship under his control. As he succumbs to passions and resentments, Red Rose, White Rose is both sensual and restrained.

Lust, Caution

A fabulous spy story set in Shanghai in the 1940s, translated in English for the first time 
 
Eileen 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 "Eileen Chang 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

Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was born into an aristocratic family in Shanghai. 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, Romances, 1944, and Written on Water, 1945) that soon made her a literary star. The rise of Communist influence made it increasingly difficult for Chang to continue living in Shanghai; she moved to Hong Kong in 1952, then emigrated to the United States three years later. 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 1940s Shanghai, beautiful young Jiazhi spends her days playing mahjong and drinking tea with high society ladies. But China is occupied by invading Japanese forces and things are not always what they seem in wartime. 
 
Jiazhi&rsquo;s life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin&rsquo;s bullet. Yet as she waits for him to arrive at their liaison, Jiazhi begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a femme fatale and coldly take Mr Yi to his death. Or is she beginning to fall in love with him? 
 
A passionate tale of espionage, deception and love, Lust, Caution is accompanied here by four further dazzling short stories by Eileen Chang.

Love in a Fallen City

A dazzling collection of short stories by Eileen Chang, for the first time in Penguin Modern Classics

Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was born into an aristocratic family in Shanghai. 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, Romances, 1944, and Written on Water, 1945) that soon made her a literary star. The rise of Communist influence made it increasingly difficult for Chang to continue living in Shanghai; she moved to Hong Kong in 1952, then emigrated to the United States three years later. 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. 
 
 
Karen S. Kingsbury has lived in Chinese-speaking cities for nearly two decades. She taught English in Chonquing 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 Renditions and in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. She lives in Seattle.

Eileen 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&mdash;tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when she 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. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

Eileen Chang

‘But how sweet a fruit the ‘suppose’ must be, that people will sup and sup on it! A juicy fruit, like a lychee but without the pit, sparkling and light green: a fruit that hides the tart within the sweet.’ 
 
In this haunting collection of stories, a young man’s obsession leads to tragedy and a woman’s bitterness poisons a family’s legacy. In delicate, piercing prose, Chang captures a world of quiet cruelties and calamitous desires in pre-revolutionary China.

Eileen Chang

Books by Eileen Chang

Series by Eileen Chang

Penguin Archive

Articles featuring Eileen Chang

9 classics to celebrate women in translation

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