The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai

Be the first to write a review

All Available Formats + Editions

$7.78

$19.18

Paperback

$7.78

$19.18

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai Pub. Date: 1/21/2010 Publisher: Columbia University Press
$3.10

$29.95

Hardcover

$3.10

$29.95

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai Pub. Date: 2/15/2008 Publisher: Columbia University Press

Want to read this on your NOOK? Request as NOOK Book from the publisher

Thank you for requesting this book as a NOOK book from the publisher.

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

Advertising

Overview

Set in post-World War II Shanghai, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow follows the adventures of Wang Qiyao, a girl born of the longtong, the crowded, labyrinthine alleys of Shanghai's working-class neighborhoods.

Infatuated with the glitz and glamour of 1940s Hollywood, Wang Qiyao seeks fame in the Miss Shanghai beauty pageant, and this fleeting moment of stardom becomes the pinnacle of her life. During the next four decades, Wang Qiyao indulges in the decadent pleasures of pre-liberation Shanghai, secretly playing mahjong during the antirightist Movement and exchanging lovers on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Surviving the vicissitudes of modern Chinese history, Wang Qiyao emerges in the 1980s as a purveyor of "old Shanghai"—a living incarnation of a new, commodified nostalgia that prizes splendor and sophistication—only to become embroiled in a tragedy that echoes the pulpy Hollywood noirs of her youth.

From the violent persecution of communism to the liberalism and openness of the age of reform, this sorrowful tale of old China versus new, of perseverance in the face of adversity, is a timeless rendering of our never-ending quest for transformation and beauty.

Editorial Reviews

Francine Prose

…[an] extraordinary novel …it is Wang Anyi's complex and penetrating portrayal of her heroine that best displays her gifts as a novelist. Michael Berry and Susan Chang Egan's graceful translation…helps us understand why Wang Anyi is one of the most critically acclaimed writers in the Chinese-speaking world…The novel is particularly illuminating and incisive on the subject of female friendship, on what draws girls and women together and then drives them apart.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Enamored by Hollywood in prerevolutionary China, Wang Qiyao serendipitously poses for a photograph that is chosen for the cover of Shanghai Lifemagazine. Dubbed "A Proper Young Lady of Shanghai," she wins second runner-up in a 1946 beauty pageant and is soon mistress to a wealthy benefactor. After his death, marriage in her fallen state is out of the question, and Wang Qiyao embarks on a lonely, decades-long journey through Shanghai's myriad longtang, or "vast neighborhoods inside enclosed alleys." In a beautifully constructed cyclical narrative from Wang Anyi (Baotown), fashion serves as the lens through which Wang Qiyao analyzes her descent from fleeting fame to desperate anonymity. Charting her fortunes becomes a metaphor for a vanished way of Shanghai life in this ingenious tale: friends and lovers come and go, Maoist China undergoes immense social and political changes (none explicitly detailed), yet Wang Qiyao finds that "[t]here are only so many designs, and their rotation is what defines fashion. Only sometimes a cycle drags on too long." As the novel builds to its tragic conclusion, the manner in which character types and events recur against the city's shifting backdrop is impossible to forget. (Mar.)

More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews

Historical Novels Review

Spellbinding, colorful... a page-turner right up to the end.

— Helene Williams

New York Times Book Review

Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan's graceful translation... helps us understand why Wang Anyi is one of the most critically acclaimed writers in the Chinese-speaking world.

— Francine Prose

Taipei Times

A genuine classic.

— Bradley Winterton

World Literature Today

Certain to take a preeminent place in China's literary canon... The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is at last available in a masterful English translation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231143431
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 1/21/2010
Pages: 456
Sales rank: 706,175
Series: Weatherhead Books on Asia Series
Product dimensions: 5.70 (w) x 8.60 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Wang Anyi began her career as a writer in 1978. Her books in English include Lapse of Time, Love in a Small Town, Love on a Barren Mountain, Brocade Valley, and the novel Baotown, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year award. She currently lives in Shanghai and is a professor of Chinese literature at Fudan University.Michael Berry is associate professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the translator of several novels and the author of Jia Zhangke's Hometown Trilogy, A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film, and Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers.Susan Chan Egan, an independent scholar, is the author of A Latterday Confucian: Reminiscences of William Hung 1893-1980 and coauthor of A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit: The Half-Century Romance of Hu Shi and Edith Clifford Williams.

Translators' Notes and AcknowledgmentsThe Song of Everlasting SorrowAfterword, by Michael Berry

Customer Reviews

Be the first to write a review

( 0 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(0)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble