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A Short History of Civilisation, Volume 2
A Short History of Civilisation (文明小史)
Li Boyuan's A Short History of Civilisation is a panorama of China trying to 'modernise' in the 1890s: foreign mining engineers attacked by villagers, officials who fear foreigners, students who cut their queues, reformers, frauds and translators. Comic and bitter, it is one of the great satirical novels of the late Qing. This second volume follows the reformers and returned students to Shanghai and Beijing. This complete new English translation is published in two volumes; this is Volume 2 of 2, and the whole set is also available as a bundle. Written as the empire was collapsing, it shows China meeting steamships, newspapers, foreign concessions and reform, and it is sharper and funnier than most readers expect. Very little of this extraordinary body of fiction has been translated, and it shows a China in rapid, painful and often absurd transformation.
