• Lena Scheen writes a lucid and compelling account of literature written amidst Shanghai’s sweeping transformations from 1990-2010. She evokes lived experiences of the city via literary and cultural analysis informed by field research on influential authors, their texts and their public reception. Shanghai Literary Imaginings is essential reading on turn-of-the-millennium Shanghai literary culture. -- Robin Visser, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Shanghai Literary Imaginings offers significant new insights into contemporary Chinese urban culture from a highly innovative methodological perspective. Its truly interdisciplinary approach makes Shanghai Literary Imaginings stand out from other books that comment on contemporary Chinese city life. -- Michel Hockx, SOAS, University of London
• Shanghai Literary Imaginings is an admirable feat of organization, analysis, translation, and interpretation, bringing to light a large body of work that would otherwise lie buried, at least in the western world of Chinese studies. -- Andrew David Field, Duke Kunshan University
Author(s): Lena Scheen
Series: Asian Cities
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 284
City: Amsterdam
Tags: Chinese literature; Shanghai; Shanghai culture; Urban China; Urbanization; Urban fiction; Wang Anyi; Chen Danyan; Wei Hui; Mian Mian; Ge Hongbing; Jin Yucheng; Chinese fiction
Introduction: Shanghai Literary Imaginings: The City of Feeling Rising out of the City of Fact (pp. 15-50)
1 Mappings: Drawing Mental Maps of Memories (pp. 51-100)
2 Seduction: Reproducing the City as Femme Fatale (pp. 101-154)
3 Nostalgia: Restoring Old Buildings to Rewrite the Past (pp. 155-200)
4 Escape: Out of and into Various Places ‘Real’ and Imagined (pp. 201-242)
In Conclusion: The Shape of a City Changes Faster than the Human Heart Can Tell (pp. 243-248)
Glossary (pp. 249-258)
Works Cited (pp. 259-274)
Index (pp. 275-280)
