Love in a Fallen City (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

Eileen Chang (Author), Karen S. Kingsbury (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2006 | Series: New York Review Books Classics

A New York Review Books Original

“[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” –The New York Times

"With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She 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 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. Written when Chang 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 American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Chang died in 1995 in Los Angeles, having emigrated to the U.S. in 1955 at 35. These six stories, most available in English for the first time, were published to acclaim in China and Hong Kong in the '40s; they explore, bewitchingly, the myriad ways love overcomes (or doesn't) the intense social constraints of time and place. In the compact "Sealed Off," Shanghai briefly shuts down in defense against a blockade, and strangers on a tram allow their inner yearnings to surface, with consequences at once momentous and static. In the layered title story, a couple taunt each other with false estrangements as they fall in love, then are forced to confront one another directly through wartime privations. The startling novella "The Golden Cangue," told with upstairs-downstairs shifts in perspective, fugues around a wife, resentful of her disabled husband and reviled by his family, who seeks reassurance in opium. In these eloquent tragedies, Chang plunges readers in medias res. She expertly burdens her characters with failed dreams and stifled possibilities, leads them to push aside the heavy curtains of family and convention, and then shows them a yawning emptiness. Their different responses are brilliantly underplayed and fascinating. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

Chang, a popular writer in China during World War II, immigrated to the United States in the 1950s, where she continued to write until her death in 1995. This posthumous collection contains six vibrant stories that depict life in post-WWII China. In "Aloeswood Incense," Weilong, a girl from Shanghai, calls on her aunt, a not-quite-respectable cosmopolitan widow, for financial assistance so that she can continue her college education. Her aunt agrees on the condition that Weilong stay with her, and then proceeds to manipulate the young girl's love life. "Jasmine Tea" revolves around a young man burning with resentment over the ill treatment he has received for most of his life from his father and stepmother. He turns his ire on the daughter of the man his mother loved, with disastrous consequences. In "Sealed Off," a stifled accountant sits next to a young English teacher on the tram, and the two end up connecting, albeit briefly. Evocative and vivid, Chang's stories bristle with equal parts passion and resentment. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (October 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590171780
• ISBN-13: 978-1590171783
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Chinese

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spare and Bleak, April 7, 2008

By 

Andrew Tytherleigh (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love in a Fallen City (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

There is no room for a fullfilled romance here. Broken dreams, shared pain and loss. Oh could love get worse? Well yes especially when it was the woman you were dating that turned you onto Zhang Aileen and then created her own real life version of these stories.

Since the release of Ang Lee's Lust Caution which was based on one of Zhang's short stories, interest in this unusual and reclusive writer has been revived. This collection of short stories is a collection of characters whose fatal flaws and their circumstances conspire against them to shatter any illusion of love. They are so sad and you are thrilled when there is a glimmer of love and softness between them.

The stories all have a common theme: that love will never triumph between lonely people - that their loneliness brings them together for the wrong reasons and will also ultimately keep them apart.

The translator has done an amazing job of preserving the spartan nature of the prose and maintaining the author's voice - these stories are emotionally draining - but not heavy going. The characters are finely drawn and there is a lightness of language that evokes the fragility of love.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love In a Fallen City, May 2, 2008

By 

quaziheart - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love in a Fallen City (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Often brandished as a feminist writer for her conscious choice to put female leads in her short stories, to me, Elieen Chang is actually more of a hopeless-romantic. The heroines within the collection of short stories, like Eileen Chang herself are elitists-one of a handful of people having money, leisure, and education. And like Elieen Chang, her heroines are searching for love in a turbulent time of change and chaos in Post-WWII China.

Her characters don't care for women equality or political agendas, they have enough on their plates when they are free to pursue their own love lives rather than to be arranged married, which is radically new for that era. Armed with elitist ammos of idealism and wit, these heroines are able to charm their lovers and seducers to be their eventual husbands. And through their quest for romance, the heroines overcome heavy obstacles of archaic traditions, portrayed by old-school fathers or menacing mother-in-laws.

Love in a Fallen City can be appreciated more in the backdrop of Chinese history. Shanghai is the frontier of modernizing China, struggling to break free from the feudalistic traditions of the past, particularly confining to women. As an introspective, intelligent, hopeless-romantic woman writer, Elieen Chang has already overcome barriers by creating characters that are just learning how to play the game of love.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will leave an impression on love, January 10, 2009

By 

Elle "jadesong86" (California) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Love in a Fallen City (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

After the film adaptation of Lust, Caution, interest in Eileen Chang's work has resurfaced, and I think that the half a dozen stories anthology features some of her better stories.

Love in a Fallen City contributes to a view of love that might leave the reader a little disillusioned with love, but is certainly worth reading, as her stories make a rich impression. Each features a heroine often burdened by social and familial expectation when she encounters love, as in the titular story. Because of such burdens, love becomes an escape or even an illusion built in her mind and becomes a fascinating study of the female psyche as well as of the female voice during the development of the modern China.

Chang's prose is lyrical and the stories will go by quickly if read for pure pleasure, but take a moment to slow down and absorb the characters and settings. The symbolism is sometimes raw and sometimes subtle, but the stories always rich with emotion and sincerity.