Book Excerpt! Fu Ping

“Deftly translated by Howard Goldblatt, this love song to Shanghai continues Wang Anyi’s evocation of women’s struggles for individuality and sensual freedom, and further establishes her as one of the world’s great writers.”

~Douglas Unger, author of Leaving the Land and Voices from Silence

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Our Women in Translation Month, feature on Wang Anyi’s Fu Ping continues today with an excerpt from chapter five. Translated by the prolific Howard Goldblatt, Fu Ping shows life in the alleys and side streets of Shanghai in the 1960s through the eyes of girl from the country, come to the city to meet her future grandmother-in-law. While there, she experiences the city through nannies, handymen, and garbage collectors–the people who make the city run–and begins to question her future. In this expert, Fu Ping observes the antics of students at the middling girls’ middle school across the street from her home.

If you enjoy the excerpt above, check out excerpts and reviews of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, another of Wang Anyi’s novels in translation from Columbia University Press.