Running Wild: New Chinese Writers

By selecting 14 writers from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as the United States and New Zealand, the editors of this anthology posit a China ``defined not by geopolitical boundaries and ideological closures but by overlapping cultures and shared imaginative resources.'' In his afterword, Wang astutely, if at times pedantically, limns the common bonds of this diverse group, whose work is immensely varied in style and substance--whatever their commonalities. ``Divine Debauchery,'' by Mo Yan, author of Red Sorghum , is a stylized, seemingly allegorical tale of custom and desire in the early days of the Republic. The avant-garde writer Yu Hua's ``One Kind of Reality'' is a horrifying tale of family tragedy transmogrified into multiple murder, told in a chilling, matter-of-fact tone Bret Easton Ellis would do well to study, while New York doctor Gu Zhaosen's ``Plain Moon'' is an elegant and economical story of the impact of the Tiananmen Square incident on one lonely Chinese American woman. In ``Ghost Talk'' Yan Lian, now living in New Zealand, delivers a lyrical reflection on life as an exile: ``When was it that you stopped using the word home ? . . . You've also stopped talking about `going back'--what does back mean anyway? All you do is go away, again and again, each time a little farther. When you wake up in the morning, you're already a little farther away than yesterday.'' Ably translated by a number of contributors, this volume is an intriguing introduction to the multitude of new voices in Chinese literature. Advertising. (June)