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The Border Town (1936)

by Shen Congwen(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Yilin Publishing House

review 1: Shen Congwen is one of pioneers of modern Chinese literature, and with Border Town - one of his most famous books, it is easy to see why. Falling under the "native soil" genre of writings, Shen describes in detail the daily lives of the villagers in a semi-fictional town in the author's home province of Hunan. A descriptively simple book, Shen has managed to paint a picture almost frozen in time, of China before the turmoil of the mid-twentieth century.
review 2: I can easily fall into ruts in my reading. I tend to gravitate towards California writers. When I feel myself falling into one of these ruts, I walk the shelves of my local library. One of the gems I found this way was Border Town (边城) by Shen Congwen.Cuicui lives on the edge of a river with her fe... morerryman grandfather. She has learned his job but is also intrigued by thoughts of love and romance. Her two suitors though aren't of her liking, she has grander notions that go beyond the two sides of the river.It's a beautiful book, one that can easily be read on a lazy afternoon. It seems like such an innocuous volume. But like so many artists and intellectuals Shen was ultimately assigned the job of toilet cleaner after the Cultural Revolution (see "A Public Space" in the links below for more information) less

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