Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu

<p><b>Introducing the works of a major Chinese writer-liberal cosmopolitan and lyrically exotic—once banned but now embraced and newly "discovered" in the West.</b><br></p><p>Xu Xu 徐訏 (1908-1980) was one of the most widely read Chinese authors of the 1930s to 1960s. His popular urban gothic tales his exotic spy fiction and his quasi-existentialist love stories full of nostalgia and melancholy offer today's readers an unusual glimpse into China’s turbulent twentieth century.</p><p>These translations--spanning a period of some thirty years from 1937 until 1965--bring to life some of Xu Xu’s most representative short fictions from prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan.<br></p><p>The Afterword illustrates that Xu Xu’s idealistic tendencies in defiance of the politicization of art exemplify his affinity with European romanticism and link his work to a global literary modernity.<br></p>