| Family Catastrophe: A Modernist Novel Contributor(s): Wang, Wen-Hsing (Author), Dolling, Susan Wan (Translator) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0824816188 ISBN-13: 9780824816186 Publisher: University of Hawaii Press OUR PRICE: $36.10 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 1995 Annotation: Set in post-1949 Taiwan, this novel is an intimate revelation of a family's journey to catastrophe. The father of the all-too-ordinary Fan family suddenly flees from home; his son, Fan Yeh, sets off to search for him but is repeatedly unsuccessful, returning alone to the anxiously waiting mother. As it tracks Fan Yeh's fruitless search, Wang Wen-hsing's innovative narrative unfolds the history of this family, depicting relationships both tender and brutal and divulging secrets of poverty and abuse, love and hate. Working through the complex metaphor of the family, Wang Wen-hsing examines that dissolution of a traditional ethical system and cultural identity which is the harrowing and inevitable path to modernism. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Historical - General |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 94-33940 |
| Series: Fiction from Modern China |
| Physical Information: 0.96" H x 5.54" W x 8.4" (0.75 lbs) 268 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1950-1999 - Cultural Region - Asian - Ethnic Orientation - Asian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Wang Wen-hsing caused a sensation in Taiwan in 1972 with publication of Family Catastrophe, his first full-length novel. Many critics were outraged, called it socially irresponsible, morally corrupt, and stylistically irrational, but the novel weathered its controversial reception to become what is now widely regarded as a masterpiece in modern Chinese fiction and the benchmark of Taiwan's Modernist movement. Often described as Joycean, Family Catastrophe is significant for its stylistic and linguistic experimentation as well as for its disturbing and universal themes. It appears now in English for the first time. |