Soft Burial

Name: Soft Burial
Brand: Columbia University Press
Price: 81.5 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

A Novel

By: Fang Fang, Michael Berry (Translator)

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Paperback | 18 March 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
416 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.5 x 14.0 x 2.5

Paperback

$81.50

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Available: 18th March 2025

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Fang Fang's Soft Burial begins with a mysterious, nameless protagonist. Decades earlier she was pulled out of a river in a state of near-death; upon regaining consciousness, she discovered that her entire memory had been erased. The narrative follows her journey through recovery as she takes a job as a housekeeper in the home of a powerful cadre, marries the doctor who saved her, and starts a family of her own. As the story unfolds, the protective cocoon of amnesia that her subconscious wove around her begins to give way, revealing glimpses of her previous life and the unspeakable trauma that she suffered.

Soft Burial is one of the most remarkable--and most controversial--recent works of Chinese literature. Part mystery, part historical fiction, and part social expos , the novel intercuts different generations, regions, and time periods. First published in 2016, Soft Burial initially received critical acclaim but soon faced a wave of denunciations and was taken off the shelves of bookstores throughout China. Fang Fang challenged the unspoken rules that govern how Chinese writers portray the past by depicting the human costs of the Land Reform Campaign in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and she was attacked for expressing sympathy toward members of the "landlord class." An intimate portrait of historical trauma and the psychological toll of repressed violence, Soft Burial is a landmark in contemporary Chinese fiction.

Industry Reviews

Fang Fang's Soft Burial beautifully evokes the intergenerational trauma stemming from the Land Reform Movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This is a fantastic novel, an excellent translation, and an important contribution to modern Chinese literature and world literature. -- Levi S. Gibbs, author of Song King: Connecting People, Places, and Past in Contemporary China

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