The Real Story of Ah-Q Read Free

Xun’s brother, with incisive observations about the canonical status of Lu Xun.
Denton, Kirk, ed.,
Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). An anthology of key essays and polemics of modern Chinese literature, including three pieces by Lu Xun and invaluable scholarly introductions by the editor.
Foster, Paul B., ‘The Ironic Inflation of Chinese National Character: Lu Xun’s International Reputation, Romain Rolland’s Critique of “The True Story of Ah Q” and the Nobel Prize’,
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture
13.1 (Spring 2001), pp. 140–68.
Goldman, Merle, ed.,
Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). A useful collection of essays on modern Chinese literature, including three articles on Lu Xun.
Hanan, Patrick,
Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). Includes an important exploration of Lu Xun’s fictional technique and foreign influences.
Hsia, C. T.,
A History of Modern Chinese Fiction
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). For years after it was first published, the leading critical reference work on twentieth-century Chinese fiction.
Hsia, T. A.,
The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Movement in China
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968). A thorough account of, among other things, Lu Xun’s disputes with the literary left wing in the early 1930s.
Leo Ou-fan Lee,
Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). An intellectual biography of the writer.
——, ed.,
Lu Xun and His Legacy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). A key collection of critical essays.
Liu, Lydia,
Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1937
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), especially Chapter Two. An exploration of the ways in which modern Chinese writers and thinkers translated ideas about modernity, with an interesting discussion of Lu Xun and ‘The Real Story of Ah-Q’.
Lyell, William,
Lu Xun’s Vision of Reality
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). A colourful biography of the writer, with detailed discussion of his realist fiction.
McDougall, Bonnie S.,
Love-letters and Privacy in Modern China: The Intimate Lives of Lu Xun and Xu Guangping
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). A highly informative insight into the private thoughts and emotions of Lu Xun and his common-law wife.
—— and Kam, Louie, eds.,
The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century
(London: Hurst, 1997). An essential critical reference work on modern Chinese fiction, poetry and drama.
Pollard, David E.,
The True Story of Lu Xun
(Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002). The most recent English-language biography of the writer.
Spence, Jonathan,
The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895–1980
(New York: Viking, 1981). A very readable account of modern China’s intellectual and literary revolutionaries, with extensive discussion of Lu Xun.
Wang, David Der-wei,
Fictional Realism in 20th Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). A wide-ranging survey of representative writers of modern Chinese realism, with an introduction focused on Lu Xun.
Yue, Gang,
The Mouth That Begs: Hunger, Cannibalism, and the Politics of Eating in Modern China
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). Features a chapter on Lu Xun and cannibalism.
Consult also the thorough primary and secondary bibliographies on Lu Xun at the online Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Center, available at http://mclc.osu.edu/ .

A Note on the Translation
     
    The complete fiction of Lu Xun, as translated here, has been arranged by order of publication of collection, beginning with the stand-alone short story ‘Nostalgia’, and followed by
Outcry,