The Past and the Punishments (Fiction from Modern China) [Hardcover]

Hua Yu (Author), Howard Goldblatt (Editor), Andrew F. Jones (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Fiction from Modern China | Publication Date: June 1996

To travel through these stories is to cross a landscape of stunning beauty and terrific cruelty, where expectations are subverted, where moral certainties are shattered, where gorgeously wrought surfaces beguile at the same time that acts of incredible brutality horrify. It is no wonder that Yu Hua's stories caused a sensation when they first appeared in the 1980s. His work represents a sophisticated and often disturbing revolution in the Chinese literary tradition, reminiscent of the fiction of modernists like Kafka, Kawabata, Borges, and Robbe-Grillet, but drawing inspiration from several strains of traditional Chinese narrative as well. This is the first collection of short fiction by Yu Hua to appear in English. It takes us on a haunting and harrowing journey from classical China through the Cultural Revolution and into the new era of economic reform, exploding along the way our preconceived notions of what Chinese literature and culture are all about in the 1990s.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

That the concept and history of punishment should figure heavily in the artistic sensibility of a young Chinese writer who grew up during the Cultural Revolution is hardly surprising. The main characters in both the title story and in "1986" are scholars specializing in the history of punishment through the ages, and an ancient fortune teller in another story is said to have achieved near-immortality through the deaths of his first four children. Personality and feeling are almost secondary in Yu Hua's cruel world, a world dominated by numerology, prophecy, and the faceless power of the state. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Yu is best known in this country for his novel Lifetimes, or more precisely for the moving film adaptation of it, the 1994 Cannes Film Festival-winning To Live. This collection of stories is marked by scenes of jarring brutality that may discomfit American readers. None of the violence is extraneous, though; juxtaposed with passages of exquisite grace and layers of symbolic meaning, it creates a subtle reading of the harshness of contemporary China. In "On the Road at Eighteen," a young man finds out what life is truly like while walking down a deserted country road. "Classical Love" parodies the traditional Chinese love tale, setting it against the chaos and violence of ancient Imperial China. In the title story, the past catches up with "the stranger" in the form of an ultimate punishment. Yu's style is somewhat detached, and Jones's stately translation preserves that quality, but that only makes the barbarity more noticeable.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 277 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr (June 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824817826
• ISBN-13: 978-0824817824
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,517,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.