Julia Lovell

A history of global Maoism: a crucial motor of the Cold War, it shaped the course of the Vietnam War (and the international youth rebellions that conflict triggered) and brought to power the murderous Khmer Rouge in Cambodia

A Global History

Maoism

"'On the outside, [the foreigners] seem intractable, but inside they are cowardly... Although there have been a few ups-and-downs, the situation as a whole is under control.' In October 1839, a few months after the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zexu, dispatched these confident words to his emperor, a Cabinet meeting in Windsor voted to fight Britain's first Opium War (1839-42) with China. The conflict turned out to be rich in tragicomedy: in bureaucratic fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the past hundred and seventy years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and compromise has become the founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism: the start of China's heroic struggle against a Western conspiracy to destroy the country with opium and gunboat diplomacy. Beginning with the dramas of the war itself, Julia Lovell explores its background, causes and consequences... The Opium War is both the story of modern China--starting from this first conflict with the West--and an analysis of the country's contemporary self-image. It explores how China's national myths mould its interactions with the outside world, how public memory is spun to serve the present, and how delusion and prejudice on both sides have bedevilled its relationship with the modern West."--book jacket.

Ya Pian Zhan Zheng

Gene Luen Yang

Cheng'En Wu

Monkey King

Eileen Chang

Ailing Zhang

In the midst of the Japanese occupation of China and Hong Kong, two lives become intertwined: Wong Chia Chi, a young student active in the resistance, and Mr. Yee, a powerful political figure who works for the Japanese occupational government. As these two move deftly between Shanghai’s tea parties and secret interrogations, they become embroiled in the complicated politics of wartime — and in a mutual attraction that may be more than what they expected. Written in lush, lavish prose, and with the tension of a political thriller, Lust, Caution brings 1940s Shanghai artfully to life even as it limns the erotic pulse of a doomed love affair.

Lust, Caution

âe~A gripping read as well as an important one.âe(tm) Rana Mitter, Guardian In October 1839, Britain entered the first Opium War with China. Its brutality notwithstanding, the conflict was also threaded with tragicomedy: with Victorian hypocrisy, bureaucratic fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the past hundred and seventy years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and compromise has become the founding episode of modern Chinese nationalism. Starting from this first conflict, The Opium War explores how Chinaâe(tm)s national myths mould its interactions with the outside world, how public memory is spun to serve the present, and how delusion and prejudice have bedevilled its relationship with the modern West. âe~Lively, erudite and meticulously researchedâe(tm) Literary Review âe~An important reminder of how the memory of the Opium War continues to cast a dark shadow.âe(tm) Sunday Times

Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China

The Opium War

China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000

The Great Wall

FROM THE INTRODUCTION:This book looks behind the modern mythology of the Great Wall to uncover a 3000-year history far more fragmented and far less straightforwardly illustrious than its crowds of visitors imagine.The story of the Wall winds through that of the Chinese state and of the frontier policy that defined it, through the lives of the millions of individuals who supported, criticised, built and attacked it.It is time to see the Wall less as it is now – a great tourist attraction, an impressive piece of engineering – and more as it has been throughout its monumental history: a symbol that reveals China's sense of itself, and of the outside world.

China Against the World 1000 BC - 2000 AD

In the 1980s China’s politicians, writers, and academics began to raise an increasingly urgent question: why had a Chinese writer never won a Nobel Prize for literature? Promoted to the level of official policy issue and national complex, Nobel anxiety generated articles, conferences, and official delegations to Sweden. Exiled writer Gao Xingjian’s win in 2000 failed to satisfactorily end the matter, and the controversy surrounding the Nobel committee’s choice has continued to simmer. Julia Lovell’s comprehensive study of China’s obsession spans the twentieth century and taps directly into the key themes of modern Chinese culture: national identity, international status, and the relationship between intellectuals and politics. The intellectual preoccupation with the Nobel literature prize expresses tensions inherent in China’s move toward a global culture after the collapse of the Confucian world-view at the start of the twentieth century, and particularly since China’s re-entry into the world economy in the post-Mao era. Attitudes toward the prize reveal the same contradictory mix of admiration, resentment, and anxiety that intellectuals and writers have long felt toward Western values as they struggled to shape a modern Chinese identity. In short, the Nobel complex reveals the pressure points in an intellectual community not entirely sure of itself. Making use of extensive original research, including interviews with leading contemporary Chinese authors and critics, The Politics of Cultural Capital is a comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of an issue that cuts to the heart of modern and contemporary Chinese thought and culture. It will be essential reading for scholars of modern Chinese literature and culture, globalization, post-colonialism, and comparative and world literature.

China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature

The Politics of Cultural Capital

An engaging, highly readable, character-driven account of the war that transformed China, and which continues to loom large over modern Chinese history.

Julia Lovell

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