Remembering 1942: And Other Chinese Stories

Sweeping, Humorous, and Moving Tales from One of Contemporary China's Greatest Writers

The bestselling and award-winning author of novels satirizing contemporary China, Liu Zhenyun is also renowned for his short stories. Remembering 1942 showcases six of his best, featuring a diverse cast of ordinary people struggling against the obstacles--bureaucratic, economic, and personal--that life presents.

The exquisite stories within this collection range from an exploration of office politics unmoored by an unexpected gift to the tale of a young soldier attempting to acclimate to his new life as a student and the story of a couple struggling to manage the demands of a young child. The masterful title story--which was adapted into a movie in 2012--explores the legacy of the drought and famine that struck Henan Province in 1942, tracing its echoes in one man's journey through war and revolution and into the present.

Each story is rich in wit, insight, and empathy, and together they bring into focus the realities of China's past and present, evoking clearly and mordantly the often Kafkaesque circumstances of contemporary life in the world's most populous nation.

Author: Liu Zhenyun
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 03/18/2025
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 8.41h x 5.60w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781648210945
ISBN10: 1648210945
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Family Life | General
- Fiction | Historical | General

About the Author
Liu Zhenyun is a Chinese novelist, screenwriter, and 2011 Mao Dun Literature Prize-winner. His novels include Someone to Talk To, Remembering 1942, I Did Not Kill My Husband, The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon, among others.

Howard Goldblatt is a literary translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction from mainland China and Taiwan, including Nobel Prize-winner Mo Yan, five of whose works are published by Arcade (The Garlic Ballads; The Republic of Wine; Big Breasts and Wide Hips; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh). He has also translated works by Liu Zhenyun (I Did Not Kill My Husband; The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon; Remembering 1942, which are published by Arcade), Huang Chunming (The Taste of Apples), and Chen Ruoxi (The Execution of Mayor Yin). He taught modern Chinese literature and culture for more than a quarter of a century. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.

Sylvia Li-chun Lin is a Taiwanese-born Chinese-English translator and a former professor of Chinese Literature at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Notre Dame. She won the Lian Shih-chiu Literary Translation Prize and has translated the works of Liu Zhenyun, Bi Feiyu, Mo Yan, You Jin, among others.