Description
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Translated by Matt Turner. Introduction by Nick Admussen. Edited by David Perry. In this new translation of a modernist master's most challenging and experimental writing—the first in nearly half a century—Matt Turner brings urgent life to Lu Xun's darkly surrealistic prose poems, fractured shards of memoir, and jagged-edged critique of a 1920s China shaken by existential doubt, political violence, and a literary revolution that reverberates to this day. Featuring an embossed cover and woodblock prints by Monika Lin, an introduction by Nick Admussen, and notes on the poems' historical and cultural backgrounds and on Lu Xun's role in the history of China's modernist woodblock print movement. Forrest Gander writes that "it would take a poet-translator as deft, daring, and refractory as Matt Turner to take on the sarcasm, playfulness, mystery, and aggressive invention of these poems in Chinese," and Yunte Huang writes that, "like a magnanimous host making room for a persnickety guest, Turner's English is a generous accommodation for the pique, pout, and poetics of the wild and protean imagination of a Chinese master."
Author Bio
China's leading literary modernist, Lu Xun (b. 1881 Zhou Shuren in Shaoxing, d. 1936 in Shanghai) pioneered writing in vernacular Chinese at a time when classical Chinese was still China's dominant literary language. Best known outside of China for the biting satire of his short fiction—in particular "The True Story of Ah-Q" and "Diary of a Madman" from his landmark 1923 collection A Call to Arms (1922)—he was also a prolific essayist, translator, and critic. Weeds (1927) collects Lu Xun's prose poetry and features some of his most radically experimental writing. Lu Xun was also an activist, playing a key role in China's New Culture Movement and the League of Left-Wing Writers and supporting the careers of many young writers, though he retained a critical distance from the time's party politics.
Author City: SHANGHAI CHI