Fortress Besieged

Uncorrected Proof. 8vo. Pp. xii, 426. Glossy pictorial wraps. Foreword, Author's Preface, Translators' Preface, Afterword, Notes. This translation originally published by Indiana University Press, in 1979. The present edition was first published by New Directions, in 2004.

Stamped "Proof/Damaged" to prelims., else Fine.

Set on the eve of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945), and originally published as Wéichéng in 1947, Fortress Besieged is a celebrated satire of the educated elite of modern China. A polyglot with a photographic memory, Qian was contemporary China's most erudite literary critic. The title is based on a French proverb, giving rise to a similar saying in Chinese: "Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out."

Not reprinted in mainland China until 1980, it was also banned in Taiwan because of its scathing satire of the Nationalist government. "The most delightful and carefully wrought novel in modern Chinese literature [and] perhaps... the greatest". –C.T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (1961)