Reading Modern Literature

Join us as we continue our tour through Asian literature by discussing the first half of Chang's classic novel!

Publisher's description:

"Shanghai, 1930s. Shen Shijun, a young engineer, has fallen in love with his colleague, the beautiful Gu Manzhen. He is determined to resist his family’s efforts to match him with his wealthy cousin so that he can marry her. But dark circumstances—a lustful brother-in-law, a treacherous sister, a family secret—force the two young lovers apart.

As Manzhen and Shijun go on their separate paths, they lose track of one another, and their lives become filled with feints and schemes, missed connections and tragic misunderstandings. At every turn, societal expectations seem to thwart their prospects for happiness. Still, Manzhen and Shijun dare to hold out hope—however slim—that they might one day meet again. A glamorous, wrenching tale set against the glittering backdrop of an extraordinary city, Half a Lifelong Romance is a beloved classic from one of the essential writers of twentieth-century China."

If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:

Join us as we conclude our tour through Asian literature by discussing the second half of Chang's classic novel!

If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:

Join us as we begin our series on speculative fiction by discussing Gene Wolfe's classic triptych of interrelated novellas!

Publisher's description:

"Far from Earth, two sister planets, Saint Anne and Saint Croix, circle each other in an eternal dance. It is said a race of shapeshifters once lived here, only to perish when men came. But one man believes they can still be found, somewhere in back of the beyond.

In The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe skillfully interweaves three bizarre tales to create a mesmerizing pattern: the harrowing account of the son of a mad genius who discovers his hideous heritage; a young man's mythic dreamquest for his darker half; and the bizarre chronicle of a scientist's nightmarish imprisonment. Like an intricate, braided knot, the pattern at last unfolds to reveal astonishing truths about this strange and savage alien landscape."

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Join us as we continue our tour of speculative fiction by discussing Kavan's classic novel!

Publisher's description:

"This dystopian science fiction classic details the hallucinatory hunt for a white-haired girl, through a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape

'A haunting story of sexual assault and climate catastrophe, decades ahead of its time' – The New Yorker

'A strange and compelling classic of dystopian and climate fiction, one that with foreboding and deep compassion maps the psyche and the terrain of dislocation' – Jeff VanderMeer

Anticipating climate fiction and the New Weird literary genre, while garnering fans from Doris Lessing and J.G. Ballard to China Miéville and Patti Smith since it was first published in 1967, this fantasia about predatory male sexual behavior during an apocalyptic climate catastrophe reads as though author Anna Kavan had seen the future.

Ice is slowly covering the entire globe; as the glacial tide creeps forward, the fabric of society begins to break down. Through this chaotic landscape, a nameless narrator hunts for the white-haired girl he once loved - or perhaps wishes to annihilate. Battling a powerful enemy known only as the Warden, he travels through nightmarish and ever-shifting scenes, where the object of his obsession remains constantly just out of reach. She is guarded by the Warden and by a cruel older woman who wishes her ill – but each time the narrator seems poised to rescue her the encroaching ice wreaks violence on her fragile body, or his own base nature sends him hurtling onward in his kaleidoscopic pursuit. Again and again the girl appears, but inevitably she eludes him.

This dystopian classic, the last book Anna Kavan published in her lifetime, renders her apocalyptic vision of environmental devastation and possessive violence in unforgettable, propulsive, oneiric prose."

If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here: