The Song of Everlasting Sorrow
Wang Anyi · b. 1954 · China
Originally Chang Hen Ge (Chinese) · translated by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan
Why it matters
A 1940s Shanghai beauty-pageant runner-up survives four decades of Communist rule, the Cultural Revolution, and the city's reopening, her doomed love affairs set against alleyway gossip and vanished glamour. Contemporary Chinese fiction's great elegy for old Shanghai.
At a glance
family sagapsychological novel
Difficulty 6/10slow pace440 pagesDense domestic detail and a slow, accumulating pace trade momentum for atmosphere across four decades.
