FORTRESS BESIEGED

by Ch'ien Chung-shu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1980

Born in 1910 and educated in 1935 at Oxford, Ch'ien is widely held to be one of China's most significant modern writers, and this novel a landmark in Chinese fiction. But the tradition it works out of is less Chinese than English and comic--Fielding through Dickens: adventures of innocent young men, odd ""character"" characters, and the linear progression of bumbling one's way into knowledge. The hero, Fang Hung-chien, is sent by the parents of his dead fiancee (who still feel a responsibility to Fang) to study in Berlin in the Thirties. But he doesn't study much--and returns home to China with a Ph.D. he bought through an ad in an American magazine. He secures a job teaching at a backwater college, San LÜ University, where students and teachers try to outdo each other in foolishness. And he finds a wife, Jou-chia, who's no bargain, and whom he'll divorce later on in Shanghai. Marriage is the ""fortress besieged"" of the title (""those who are outside,"" as the French proverb goes, ""want to get in, and those who are on the inside want to get out""); and it's a perfect subject for Ch'ien, who's often most interested in Chinese manners, circa 1937 (whimsical, silly) and especially the pretensions of culture: women's liberation, student intellects, pseudo-thinkers, Westernized small-time businessmen. The book is certainly an oddity--like little that comes before or after it in Chinese literature--and probably has survived the Communist weeding-out of ""cultural impurities"" because of its mockery of decadent pre-Revolutionary life. An intriguing anomaly.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Indiana Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION