On the Margins of Modernism

Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), but although they were an integral part of the Chinese literary scene their bestselling fiction has been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This groundbreaking book, the first study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other western language, re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. With in-depth analyses of their innovative short stories and novels, Christopher Rosenmeier demonstrates how these important writers incorporated and adapted narrative techniques from Shanghai modernist writers like Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying, contesting the view that modernism had little lasting impact in China and firmly positioning these two figures within the literature of their times.