| The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai Contributor(s): Wang, Anyi (Author), Berry, Michael (Translator), Egan, Susan Chan (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0231513097 ISBN-13: 9780231513098 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $25.49 Product Type: Open Ebook - Other Formats Published: February 2008 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
| Dewey: 895.135 |
| LCCN: 2007010812 |
| Physical Information: 456 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Song of Everlasting Sorrow's considered one of the crowning achievements of modern Chinese literature. First published in 1995, the novel won the Mao Dun Prize, China's top literary honor, and has been adapted for stage, television, and film. Set in post-World War II Shanghai, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow follows Wang Qiyao, a young girl infatuated with the glamour of 1940s Hollywood. After being discovered by an amateur photographer, Wang Qiyao competes in the Miss Shanghai beauty pageant of 1946 and wins second runner-up. This fleeting moment of stardom becomes the pinnacle of Wang Qiyao's life, and she spends the next forty years clinging to her experience with fame and decadence. As the decades pass, Wang Qiyao continues to live freely and indulgently, secretly playing mahjong during the anti-Rightist Movement and entertaining several lovers during the Cultural Revolution. In the 1980s she emerges as a relic of "old Shanghai"--a living incarnation of a new nostalgia--and finds herself embroiled in a tragedy reminiscent of the pulpy Hollywood noirs of her youth. From the violent persecution of communism to the liberalism and openness of the age of reform, Wang Anyi tells a sorrowful tale of old China versus new, of survival and perseverance in the face of adversity, and of our never-ending quest for transformation and beauty. |