Fortress Besieged (圍城)

Fortress Besieged is written by the famous Chinese scholar and writer. It has been recognized as one of the important academic and literary classic works.The greatest Chinese novel of the twentieth century, Fortress Besieged is a classic of world literature, a masterpiece of parodic fiction that plays with Western literary traditions, philosophy, and middle-class Chinese society in the Republican era. Set on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, our hapless hero Fang Hung-chien (á la Emma Bovary), with no particular goal in life and with a bogus degree from a fake American university in hand, returns home to Shanghai. On the French liner home, he meets two Chinese beauties, Miss Su and Miss Pao. Qian writes, "With Miss Pao it wasn't a matter of heart or soul. She hadn't any change of heart, since she didn't have a heart." In a sort of painful comedy, Fang obtains a teaching post at a newly established university where the effete pseudo-intellectuals he encounters in academia become the butt of Qian's merciless satire. Soon Fang is trapped into a marriage of Nabokovian proportions of distress and absurdity. Recalling Fielding's Tom Jones in its farcical litany of misadventures and Flaubert's "style indirect libre," Fortress Besieged is its own unique feast of delights. 《围城》是钱钟书所著的长篇小说。第一版于1947年由上海晨光出版公司出版。1949年之后,由于政治等方面的原因,本书长期无法在中国大陆和台湾重印,仅在香港出现过盗印本。1980年由作者重新修订之后,在中国大陆地区由人民文学出版社刊印。此后作者又曾小幅修改过几次。《围城》 自从出版以来,就受到许多人的推崇。由于1949年后长期无法重印,这本书逐渐淡出人们的视野。1960年代,旅美汉学家夏志清在《中国现代小说史》(A History of Modern Chinese Fiction)中对本书作出很高的评价,这才重新引起人们对它的关注。人们对它的评价一般集中在两方面,幽默的语言和对生活深刻的观察。从1990年代开始,也有人提出对本书的不同看法,认为这是一部被“拔高”的小说,并不是一部出色的作品。很多人认为这是一部幽默作品。除了各具特色的人物语言之外,作者夹叙其间的文字也显着机智与幽默。这是本书的一大特色。也有人认为这是作者卖弄文字,语言显得尖酸刻薄。但这一说法并不为大多数人接受。 Ben shu yi feng ci xing de bi diao, Miao xie le kang zhan shi qi de zhi shi fen zi qun ti, Jie shi le ta men cong sheng cun dao ling hun de quan mian kun jiong zhuang tai A Humorous Tale About Middle-class Chinese Society In The Late 1930s.