Anyi Wang

"One of a trilogy of novellas addressing the theme of women in extramarital affairs, Brocade Valley shocked China when it appeared in 1987, becoming a bestseller and effectively dynamiting the sexual puritanism of official Chinese writing. It is only in Brocade Valley, the third and most controversial of the series, that the sexually adventurous woman is not punished for her activities. On the contrary, she is awarded a highly modern prize: a new sense of self which enables her to author her own story, the story of a young married editor who has a passing but liberating affair with a famous writer. Wang Anyi brings to her heroine the device of a triple perspective - narrator, protagonist, projection. The special interior tone which results, pitched to Wang Anyi's delicately circling style, allows the reader an intimate, insider's eye-view of a surprising China and creates a resonant novella of unusual beauty."--BOOK JACKET.

241 pages ; 19 cm

"Set in post-World War II Shanghai, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow follows the adventures of Wang Qiyao, a girl born of the longtong, the crowded, labyrinthine alleys of Shanghai's working-class neighborhoods. Infatuated with the glitz and glamour of 1940s Hollywood, Wang Qiyao seeks fame in the Miss Shanghai beauty pageant, and this fleeting moment of stardom becomes the pinnacle of her life. During the next four decades, Wang Qiyao indulges in the decadent pleasures of pre-liberation Shanghai, secretly playing mahjong during the antirightist Movement and exchanging lovers on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Surviving the vicissitudes of modern Chinese history, Wang Qiyao emerges in the 1980s as a purveyor of "old Shanghai"--A living incarnation of a new, commodified nostalgia that prizes splendor and sophistication-only to become embroiled in a tragedy that echoes the pulpy Hollywood noirs of her youth."--Publisher's description.