Idle Talk in the Sun

Idle Talk in the Sun begins in Suzhou and wanders to Shanghai and Beijing, sketching the reformers, scholars, officials and frauds of 1903 with irony and an eye for absurdity. It is a short, witty novel of the reform years. It is light, sharp and full of comic scenes. This is a complete new English translation, with names in modern pinyin and the text rendered as plain, readable English prose. 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. It is an ideal book for curious readers who want to explore Chinese literature and thought beyond the few famous titles, in a clear modern English version.