The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £1.35
Trade in The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.35, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
The book could be considered the most significant Penguin Classic ever published...Lu Xun is critically regarded as the most accomplished modern writer of the most populous nation on earth, and a grasp of his work is thus extremely useful in forming an understanding of much of humanity...Julia Lovell's are arguably the most accessible translations yet (Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Time magazine )
Product Description
Lu Xun (Lu Hsun) is arguably the greatest writer of modern China, and is considered by many to be the founder of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun's stories both indict outdated Chinese traditions and embrace China's cultural richness and individuality. This volume presents brand-new translations by Julia Lovell of all of Lu Xun's stories, including 'The Real Story of Ah-Q', 'Diary of a Madman', 'A Comedy of Ducks', 'The Divorce' and 'A Public Example', among others. With an afterword by Yiyun Li.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent translation,
By
This review is from: The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
Lu Xun is famous for his short stories which point out the lack of compassion and lack of honesty in Chinese society during the late Imperial china.Lu Xun is a pen-name. His real name is Zhou Shu Ren. Born in 1881 to a scholar family he abandoned the path of studying for the imperial civil service exams to study medicine in Japan. He abandoned his study after seeing a slide of the execution of a Chinese by the Japanese in front of a group of apathetic Chinese. He came to the conclusion that a nation of healthy people is useless if they are intellectually and spiritually weak. After his Damascene experience he abandoned his medical studies and turned to writing to galvanise the Chinese people. There are 2 English translations of his complete short stories. The earlier is by William Lyell published by the University of Hawaii Press in 1990. The latest is by Julia Lovell published by Penguin in 2009 with an Afterword by Yiyun Li. Lyell's translation is more accessible compared to Lovell's though his footnotes are more and better. Lyell's version also has wonderful caricatures illustrations of The Real Story of Ah-Q. Lovell's has no illustrations. The Afterword by Li , to me , is inconsequential and does not add to the readers' appreciation of the importance of Lu Xun as an important founding figure of modern Chinese literature. For me, the best of Lu Xun's short stories are ' The Real story of Ah-Q' , ' Diary of a Madman' and 'Kong Yi Ji'.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews) 19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent anthology,
By Mr. Leong Wai Hong - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
Lu Xun is famous for his short stories which point out the lack of compassion and lack of honesty in Chinese society during the late Imperial china.Lu Xun is a pen-name. His real name is Zhou Shu Ren. Born in 1881 to a scholar family he abandoned the path of studying for the imperial civil service exams to study medicine in Japan. He abandoned his study after seeing a slide of the execution of a Chinese by the Japanese in front of a group of apathetic Chinese. He came to the conclusion that a nation of healthy people is useless if they are intellectually and spiritually weak. After his Damascene experience he abandoned his medical studies and turned to writing to galvanise the Chinese people. There are 2 English translations of his complete short stories. The earlier is by William Lyell published by the University of Hawaii Press in 1990. The latest is by Julia Lovell published by Penguin in 2009 with an Afterword by Yiyun Li. Lyell's translation is more accessible compared to Lovell's though his footnotes are more and better. Lyell's version also has wonderful caricatures illustrations of The Real Story of Ah-Q. Lovell's has no illustrations. The Afterword by Li , to me , is inconsequential and does not add to the readers' appreciation of the importance of Lu Xun as an important founding figure of modern Chinese literature. For me, the best of Lu Xun's short stories are ' The Real story of Ah-Q' , ' Diary of a Madman' and 'Kong Yi Ji'. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A master of short stories,
By Mike - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun, published by Penguin Classics, and translated by Julia Lovell.Lovell's translation is very smooth, clear, and accessible. I can't compare it to the older translation, but I can't imagine being disappointed by this one. Her ~25-page introduction is informative, as are the annotations, which can be found in the back of the book. The binding is on par with any other Penguin Classic - the spine will inevitably crease upon reading, but the pages are very secure (in my copy, anyway). Lu Xun (pen name of Zhou Shuren) was a highly influential short story writer and essayist who lived through China's revolution and subsequent social and political tumults in the early 20th century. He was both renowned and scorned for writing with base, common language rather than the lofty language of aristocrats that was popular at the time. His earlier stories are idealistic and extremely critical of traditional Chinese society, but as he ages and matures, they become more personal, nostalgic, and bleak. The final few stories in the collection are retellings of traditional Chinese folk tales. I highly recommend reading Lu Xun - his stories are filled with wisdom, understatement, irony, love, tragedy, and everything else human. I loved every story in the book - it belongs on a shelf alongside the world's finest literature. 2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ignored Former Translations of Lu Xun,
By Cantabridgian "kanshu" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
The reviews given thus far are apparently ignorant of the translations of Lu Xun by the wife-husband team of Gladys Yang and Yang Hsien-yi from the 1950s on. They were published in China for export. At that time, books were, thanks to our First Amendment, the only items from mainland China that could be imported here. China Books & Periodicals of Chicago, and later San Francisco, performed that service. Lu Xun was upheld by Mao Zedong as an ideal for Chinese writers. Xun's essays are well-worth reading as well as his fiction. I wish I were competent to comment on the quality of the various translations. Lu Xun, to this day, is a must-read.
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fiction > Classics
- Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Short Stories
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
