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Xiao Hong. The Field of Life and Death and Tales of Hulan River (Revised Edition), translated by Howard Goldblatt. Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2002. 384 pp. US$22.95 (Paperback). ISBN 0-8872-7392-0
The publication of Howard Goldblatt's translation of Xiao Hong's The Field of Life and Death and Tales of Hulan River is a most welcome event, as the original translations published in 1979 and reissued in 1988 have been all but impossible to get hold of, except perhaps from the collections of some venerable libraries. This is the first time complete translations of the two novels have been published within the same covers. The 1979 publication lacks the last two chapters of Tales , while the 1988 edition is a complete translation of Tales without The Field .
Xiao Hong (1911-1942) had for a long time been undervalued as a modern writer until Howard Goldblatt offered his translations of the talented writer's unique works to the West. He also created a Xiao Hong craze almost single handedly in the 1980s, when he brought her back to the attention of the Chinese literary world.
Xiao Hong wrote The Field at the beginning of her career, in 1934. It depicts village life in Northeast China just before the Japanese invasion. The story is full of the fire and vitality of a young writer. Tales , on the other hand, was written about a year before Xiao Hong's death, when she was suffering a great deal of physical and mental anguish in the midst of which she attempted to recall people and events of her childhood. Though she tried hard to put cheerful memories down on paper, due to her failing health and unhappiness she always seems to be looking back through sad eyes. However, both stories provide a real sense of what life was like in a village and a small town in the Northeast.
One might say that Xiao Hong was far ahead of her time. Whatever faults critics of her own time, and even long after, found can now be seen as her strengths. Xiao Hong was presented to the world of 1930s China by Lu Xun, and together with her partner...