© Columbia University Press
Nanjing 1937: A Love Story
December, 2002
Cloth, 234 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12754-7
$35.00
/ £24.00
"A moving and fascinating account of tragic love, narrated with a minimum of sentimentality and a good sense of history well captured in the fluid, unobtrusive translation." — Kirkus
"Ye Zhaoyan has managed to capture and communicate a broad spectrum of passionate emotions that transcend the cultural divide between East and West." — Booklist
"Ye paints a rich tableau of prewar Chinese politics and social mores. The contrast between the advance of the Japanese and Ding's slow seduction of Ren is both poignant and deliciously ironic." — Publishers Weekly
"For fans of Chinese literature and the myth of Chinese glamour, "Nanjing 1937" is a treasure." — Carolyn See, Washington Post
"Nanjing1937 is an interliterary feast, with significant motifs of the great wartime novelists Qian Zhongshu, Eileen Chang, and Ba Jin, plus Doctorow-like cameos of real 1930's Chinese celebrities. Berry renders the novel in a bright American idiom and provides expert glosses for all the historical figures in an index." — Choice
"Ye Zhaoyan's story has the sweep of a great saga. Nanjing 1937 is a fascinating glimpse into Chinese culture and society." — Historical Novels Review
"Ye's novel does succeed in painting an evocative picture of China's capital on the eve of the Japanese onslaught. The reimagining of life in Republican China has been a major concern in contemporary Chinese fiction, and to this body of work Nanjing 1937 is a distinctive addition." — Persimmon
"This book doesn’t just entertain, but chokes you with laughter and tears with its melodrama, romance, satire, and hilarious, in-depth portrayal of a love-crazed couple, all seamlessly woven together with history, tragedy, the sweeping depiction of historical figures and events, and the sinister atmosphere looming over the city of Nanjing before the 1937 Massacre. Ye Zhaoyan is a master storyteller indeed." — Wang Ping, author of Foreign Devil and Aching for Beauty
"With Nanjing 1937 Michael Berry brings to life for English readers an astonishing work, a thoroughly contemporary mixture of steel-edged social observation and transcendent longing reminiscent of, and comparable to, Dostoevsky at his most powerful." — James Schamus, producer and screenwriter of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Eat Drink Man Woman, and The Ice Storm