Postmodernism and Contemporary Chinese Avant-Garde Fiction

This book examines the work of a group of young avant garde fiction writers who made their rebellious appearance on the Chinese literary scene from the mid-1980s onwards.Exhibiting strategies of anti-mainstream, anti-paradigmatic discourse these writersdebunked the traditional literary conventions of a hitherto very closed Chinese society usingliterary modessuch asmetafiction, narrative strategy and postmodernist language. This book will help its readers to understand why the Chinese avant garde were so closely related to Chinese politics, and how they played a role in bringing social and cultural change in China. With this in mind the book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese and comparativeliterature as well as those interested in Chinese society more widely.

1. Introduction 2. Fiction as Artifact 3. The Postmodern Metafictive Strategy 4. Re-Envisioning China's Past 5. Carnivalization of Language 6. Conclusions

Yongchun Cai is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Translation at the Chinese University Hong Kong.