Fortress Besieged
By Mr. Qian Zhongshu
Modern writer and expert on classical Chinese literature. A native of Wuxi, Jiangsu, Qian studied foreign languages at Qinghua University. In 1935, he went to Oxford, and in 1937 went on to study French literature at the University of Paris. In 1941, he published a collection of essays entitled Xie zai renshengbian shang [Written at the edge of life] and in 1946 Renshougui [Peopleanimalsghosts], a volume of short-stories. In 1947, he published his acclaimed novel Weicheng [Fortress beseiged]. After 1949, he concentrated mainly on literary research.
The Author
"Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out.”
Fortress Besieged was first published in China in 1947, and notwithstanding its popularity and deserved acclaim it has not appeared in print since the 1949 Revolution. It remains the last of the few winners China has entered in the great novel race this century. Considered as both masterpiece of Qian Zhongshu and the most delightful and carefully wrought novel in modern Chinese literature, this sardonic black comedy has only recently been translated into Western languages, and in one sense can be considered a pace-maker, since it is the first and only Chinese contribution to that familiar genre, the novel of the anti-hero, and a theme that more complicate than life itself.
