Abstract
ABSTRACTThis abridged translation of the novella The Jewish Comet (Youtai de huixing 猶太的彗星) by the Chinese writer Xu Xu 徐訏 (1908–1980) introduces Western readers to the wartime fiction of one of the most popular authors of the Republican Period (1912–1949). Written in 1937 on the eve of the outbreak of World 10 War II, the Jewish Comet (Youtai de huixing 猶太的彗星) is an exotic romance that explores the adventures of a Chinese male narrator and a female Jewish secret agent during their boat journey from Shanghai to Italy. In a critical introduction, the translator illustrates that Xu Xu’s exotic wartime fiction needs to be read as a product of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of pre-war Shanghai where readers took great interest in East-West encounters, global politics, and the plight of the Jewish people. The translator further argues that Xu Xu’s aesthetics managed to answer to the national discourse of resistance literature by bestowing agency upon his protagonists and thereby alleviating his urban readers’ guilt over their own passivity while also responding to a shared desire for romance and personal fulfillment at a time when most wartime propaganda extolled an ideology of moral collectivism and national salvation.
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