The Fall of the Pagoda

Eileen Chang is now recognized as one of the greatest modern Chinese writers, though she was completely erased from official histories in mainland China.-- Her semi-autobiographical novels depict in gripping detail her childhood years in Tianjin and Shanghai, as well as her student days in Hong Kong during World War II, and shed light on the construction of selfhood in her other novels. --- -- -- -- -- -Fall of the Pagoda introduces a young girl growing up in Shanghai amid many family entanglements with her divorced mother and spinster aunt during the 1930s, when the International Settlement in Shanghai was known as the "lonely-- isle" and relatively safe from the invading Japanese army. The Book of Change narrates her experience as a student at the University of Victoria in Hong Kong, including the fall of Hong Kong after Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941.-- The novels contain lengthy discussions of the relationship between a fictionalized Chang and her selfishly demanding mother, as well as of intricate dynamics in the extended families who emerged from aristocratic households of the late Qing Dynasty. While the main characters belong to the new Republican period, their worldviews and everyday life are still haunted by the shadows of the past.--- -This previously unpublished work is essential to any scholar or loyal fan of Eileen Chang.-