Rainbow

Disciplines Literary Studies & Poetry Fiction

About the Book

With this translation of the 1929 novel Rainbow(Hong), one of China's most influential works of fiction is at last available in English.

Rainbow chronicles the political and social disruptions in China during the early years of the twentieth century. Inspired by the iconoclasm of the "May Fourth Movement," the heroine, Mei, embarks on a journey that takes her from the limitations of the traditional family to a discovery of the new, "modern" values of individualism, sexual equality, and political responsibility. The novel moves with Mei from the conservative world of China's interior provinces down the Yangtze River to Shanghai, where she discovers the turbulent political environment of China's most modern city.

Mao Dun writes with the conviction of one who has lived through the events he is describing. Rainbow provides a moving introduction to the contradictions inherent in the simultaneous quest for personal freedom and national strengthening. Vividly evocative of the period in which it was written, it is equally relevant to the China of today.

About the Author

Shen Yanbing (1896-1981), better known by the pen name Mao Dun, was a member of the generation that created a truly vernacular Chinese literature in the early twentieth century. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he was named Minister of Culture. Madeleine Zelin is Professor of Chinese History and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. She is the author of The Magistrate's Tael (California, 1984).

Voices from Asia
1. Of Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels: A Selection of Bengali
Short Stories.
Translated and edited by Kalpana Bardhan.
z. Himalayan Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature.
Translated and edited by Michael James Hutt.
3· Shoshaman: A Tale of Corporate japan. By Arai Shinya.
Translated by Chieko Mulhern.
4· Rainbow. By Mao Dun. Translated by Madeleine Zelin.
5· Encounter. By Hahn Moo-Sook. Translated by Ok Young Kim Chang.
6. The Autobiography of Osugi Sakae. By Osugi Sakae. Translated by
Byron K. Marshall.
7· A River Called Titash. By Adwaita Mallabarman. Translated and with an
introduction by Kalpana Bardhan.
8. The Soil: A Portrait of Rural Life in Meiji]apan. By Nagatsuka fakashi.
Translated by Ann Waswo.