Choice Review

Lu Tonglin (Univ. of Iowa) surveys and studies the experimental fiction of the late 1980s in contemporary China, using the works of Mo Yan, Can Xue, Zhaxi Dawa, Su Tong, and Yu Hua. This experimental fiction is of particular interest in China because it radically subverts socialist realism. This in-depth study holds that in this literature "misogyny serves as both a basis for and a limit on its subversive function vis-^D`a-vis communism." In trying to break away from the past, be it Confucianist or Communist, these writers exhibit a cultural nihilism that ironically ties them again to the past because of their misogynist discourse. In the same way, this generation's oppositional politics of rejecting the existing social order serves to link it to the patriarchal past, which again only leads to failure. The author concludes that only when Chinese women are treated equally can China be democratic. With its feminist perspective, this study throws new light on the way both experimental fiction and contemporary China can be explained. The book also contains extensive notes and a Chinese character list. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above.