A brilliant new translation of the short improvisational fiction and memoirs of Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature.

Synopsis

A brilliant new translation of the short improvisational fiction and memoirs of Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature.

This captivating translation assembles two volumes by Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature and one of East Asia’s most important thinkers at the turn of the twentieth century. Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk represent a pinnacle of achievement alongside Lu Xun’s famed short stories.

In Wild Grass, a collection of twenty-three experimental pieces, surreal scenes come alive through haunting language and vivid imagery. These are landscapes populated by ghosts, talking animals, and sentient plants, where a protagonist might come face-to-face with their own corpse. By depicting the common struggle of real and imagined creatures to survive in an inhospitable world, Lu Xun asks the deceptively simple question, “What does it mean to be human?”

Alongside Wild Grass is Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk, a memoir in eight essays capturing the literary master’s formative years and featuring a motley cast of dislocated characters—children, servants, outcasts, the dead and the dying.

Giving voice to vulnerable subjects and depicting their hopes and despair as they negotiate an unforgiving existence, Morning Blossoms affirms the value of all beings and elucidates a central predicament of the human condition: feeling without a home in the world.

Beautifully translated and introduced by Eileen J. Cheng, these lyrical texts blur the line between autobiography and literary fiction. Together the two collections provide a new window into Lu Xun’s mind and his quest to find beauty and meaning in a cruel and unjust world.

Speaker for this event

Eileen Cheng

Eileen Cheng is professor of Asian Languages and Literatures at Pomona College. Her most recent publication is a volume of translations and introductions to Lu Xun’s Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk (Harvard University Press, 2022).

Her other works include a co-edited volume of Lu Xun’s essays Jottings Under Lamplight (Harvard University Press, 2017) and a monograph Literary Remains: Death, Trauma, and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn (University of Hawai’i Press, 2013).