{"product_id":"2026100009791-secondhand-the-true-story-of-ah-q","title":"The True Story Of Ah Q","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: 5th ed.,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of the most celebrated and enduring works of modern Chinese literature, The True Story of Ah Q chronicles the tragicomic misadventures of Ah Q, a poor, itinerant laborer living in rural China during the twilight years of the Qing Dynasty and the tumultuous dawn of the 1911 Republican Revolution. Masterfully satirical in tone, the novella presents its hapless protagonist as a man perpetually defeated by circumstance yet psychologically incapable of acknowledging failure — a mechanism Lu Hsun famously termed spiritual victory, wherein Ah Q reframes every humiliation as a private triumph.\n\nBeyond its surface-level comedy, the work stands as a searing indictment of the intellectual and moral paralysis Lu Hsun perceived within Chinese society at large, arguing that self-deception and blind conservatism were the true enemies of national progress. Written in 1921 and serialised in a Beijing newspaper, it remains a cornerstone of 20th-century world literature, lauded for its razor-sharp irony, economy of prose, and the author's unflinching willingness to hold a mirror up to an entire civilisation. The question The True Story of Ah Q ultimately poses — whether a society can ever truly reform itself without first confronting its own illusions — resonates as powerfully today as it did a century ago.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203286048987,"sku":"2026100009791-SECONDHAND","price":25.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/4b3d0cdd-d481-42c0-887f-50e638ff889f.png?v=1788147572","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100009791-secondhand-the-true-story-of-ah-q","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}