MCLC: Mu Shiying: China's Lost Modernist

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Mu Shiying: China's Lost Modernist
***********************************************************

Dear MCLC Community,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my book:

Mu Shiying: China's Lost Modernist
New Translations and an Appreciation by Andrew David Field
Hong Kong University Press, 2014
16 b/w illus.Paperback   188 Pages
ISBN 9789888208142

Below is some info on the book from the publisher's website. You will also
find more info about the book and upcoming book talks on my own website:

<http://www.andrewdavidfield.com/>

If anybody is interested in reviewing this book for a journal or website,
please contact me at andrewdavidfield at gmail.com
RAS China in Shanghai

Source: http://www.hkupress.org/book/9789888208142.htm

Description and Author
Shanghai's "Literary Comet"

When the avant-garde writer Mu Shiying was assassinated in 1940, China
lost one of its greatest modernist writers while Shanghai lost its most
detailed chronicler of the city's Jazz-Age nightlife. Mu's highly original
stream-of-consciousness approach to short story writing deserves to be
re-examined and re-read. As Andrew Field argues, Mu advanced modern
Chinese writing beyond the vernacular expression of May Fourth giants Lu
Xun and Lao She to reveal even more starkly the alienation of a city
trapped between the forces of civilization and barbarism in the 1930s.

Mu Shiying: China's Lost Modernist includes translations of six short
stories, four of which have not appeared before in English. Each story
focuses on Mu's key obsessions: the pleasurable yet anxiety-ridden social
and sexual relationships in the modern city, and the decadent maelstrom of
consumption and leisure epitomized by the dance hall and nightclub. In his
introduction, Field situates Mu's work within the transnational and
hedonistic environment of inter-war Shanghai, the city's entertainment
economy, as well as his place within the wider arena of Jazz-Age
literature from Berlin, Paris, Tokyo and New York.

Andrew David Field is the author of Shanghai's Dancing World: Cabaret
Culture and Urban Politics, 1919–1954.

"Mu Shiying is a legendary figure of 1930s Shanghai. His dazzling
chronicle of modern Shanghai gave rise to Chinese modernist literature.
His meteoric career as a writer, a flâneur, and allegedly a double agent
testifies to cosmopolitanism at its most flamboyant, brilliant and
enigmatic. Andrew Field's translation is concise and lively, and his
account of Mu Shiying's adventure in modern Shanghai is itself a
fascinating story. This is a splendid book for anyone interested in the
dynamics of Shanghai modern."
— David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University

"Mu Shiying was one of China's pioneer modernists, and his stories are
full of inventive touches, including his own experimental technique of
stream-of-consciousness, that evoke the emergent splendour of urban
decadence of Shanghai in the 1930s. This English translation of his most
important stories edited and translated by an acknowledged historian of
Shanghai culture is long overdue."
— Leo Ou-fan Lee, author of Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban
Culture in China: 1930–1945

"During his short, tumultuous life, Mu Shiying produced a small oeuvre of
remarkable short stories that stand out in the wider context of modern
Chinese literature. He captures the essence of the Shanghai jazz age with
his racy, musical, and often fragmented prose, which blends a genuine
excitement about the wonders of "the Paris of the East" with an at times
sobering undertone of social critique. Unlike some of the more explicitly
left-wing writers of his time, Mu never relinquishes the medium for the
message. He is first and foremost a writer of experimental, original work
that even nowadays has lost nothing of its power. As a teacher of modern
Chinese literature, I am delighted that this new translation has become
available."
—Michel Hockx, Director, SOAS China Institute