Fortress Besieged
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image. Faded cover with slight creasing. **ENGLISH and CHINESE text.**
A landmark of modern Chinese literature, Fortress Besieged is a sharp, satirical novel set in 1930s China that chronicles the misadventures of Fang Hung-chien, a hapless young man who returns from Europe with a fraudulent diploma and stumbles through a series of romantic entanglements and social humiliations. Qian Zhongshu — one of China's most celebrated intellectuals — wields his wit like a scalpel, dissecting the pretensions, hypocrisies, and absurdities of the educated class with devastating precision. The novel's central metaphor, drawn from a French proverb about marriage being a fortress that those outside wish to enter and those inside wish to escape, illustrates the universal human condition of perpetual dissatisfaction and self-deception. Written with dazzling erudition and a tone that is at once comic and melancholic, the narrative presents a panoramic portrait of a society caught between tradition and modernity, East and West. Widely regarded as the Chinese equivalent of Evelyn Waugh or Kingsley Amis at their most acerbic, Fortress Besieged remains a timeless and brilliantly observed comedy of manners.
Author: Ch'Ien Chung-Shu
Format: Paperback
Published: 2003, The People's Literature Publishing House
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image. Faded cover with slight creasing. **ENGLISH and CHINESE text.**
A landmark of modern Chinese literature, Fortress Besieged is a sharp, satirical novel set in 1930s China that chronicles the misadventures of Fang Hung-chien, a hapless young man who returns from Europe with a fraudulent diploma and stumbles through a series of romantic entanglements and social humiliations. Qian Zhongshu — one of China's most celebrated intellectuals — wields his wit like a scalpel, dissecting the pretensions, hypocrisies, and absurdities of the educated class with devastating precision. The novel's central metaphor, drawn from a French proverb about marriage being a fortress that those outside wish to enter and those inside wish to escape, illustrates the universal human condition of perpetual dissatisfaction and self-deception. Written with dazzling erudition and a tone that is at once comic and melancholic, the narrative presents a panoramic portrait of a society caught between tradition and modernity, East and West. Widely regarded as the Chinese equivalent of Evelyn Waugh or Kingsley Amis at their most acerbic, Fortress Besieged remains a timeless and brilliantly observed comedy of manners.