The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Klappentext "Through the life of a remarkable woman--based on pioneering stage director Sun Weishi (1921-1968)--this epic novel immerses us in the multifaceted history of China's Communist Party. Sun Weishi was educated in Moscow and when she returned to China she produced the works of Chekov, Gogol, and other socially progressive dramas. However, when the cultural revolution began in 1966, she was persecuted, arrested, and eventually died in prison."-- Leseprobe One   Yomei was wondering why Jiang Ching wanted to meet after the evening class. They were both at Lu Hsun Academy of Literature and Arts in Yan’an, the legendary Communist base in the remote Shaanxi Province. Ching was an instructor, Yomei a student. Both had come to this place the previous year, 1937. Yomei was seventeen and Ching twenty-four. But their seven-year age gap set them as apart as if they belonged to different generations, especially when they were onstage and in the arena of love. They had known each other since four summers before in Shanghai, when they were in the Oriental Troupe of Modern Drama—Yomei had been an apprentice there and even taken an acting class taught by Ching. At that time the girl was still too green to perform in plays, while Ching, called Lan Ping then, was a burgeoning actress seeking her place in the metropolitan’s theater circle. In The Government Inspector , the Gogol comedy, Ching played only a minor role, a locksmith’s wife, despite her moderate success as a starlet in several movies. That same year, however, she had managed to snatch a leading part—Nora, in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House —and then another major role—Katherina in Ostrovsky’s The Storm . But here in Yan’an, Yomei, younger and more talented, could easily outshine Ching onstage. A few months before, they had acted together in The Blood Sacrifice in Shanghai , which commemorates that city’s fight against the Japanese invasion six years earlier. Yomei performed the leading female role—the daughter of a rich capitalist—whereas Ching had to settle for a secondary part—the rich man’s concubine. The play had been so successful that it was performed twenty times in the town of Yan’an alone, watched by more than ten thousand people. Some even perched on the trees around the platform to get a better view. Numerous Communist leaders saw it and praised the performance. It was said that Ching had met Mao Zedong personally at one of her performances. Mao was so impressed by the troupe’s recent productions that he suggested establishing Lu Hsun Academy of Literature and Arts, and his colleagues unanimously supported the idea. After the performance season, both Yomei and Ching became well known—even children in the streets would call Yomei “the Miss” and Ching “the Concubine.” To a degree, Ching was annoyed by such notoriety, and she knew that as far as acting went, Yomei may have been getting ahead of her—in recent years, after her apprenticeship and before coming to Yan’an, the girl, Yomei, had acted in several movies and plays in Shanghai and ea...

Product details

• Authors: Ha Jin
• Publisher: Other press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.11.2023
• EAN: 9781635423778
• ISBN: 978-1-63542-377-8
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 230 mm x 50 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries