A History of Contemporary Chinese Literature, by Hong Zicheng, translated by Michael M. Day. Leiden: Brill, 2007. xx + 636 pp. euro104.00/US$149.00 (hardcover). This book is an ambitious, even heroic effort in two distinct ways: first, as a comprehensive history of a controversial subject, written and published in China for a Chinese audience in 1999; secondly, as the translation of a work that requires extensive adaptation for people who read about China in English. In effect, it is two books in one, raising questions about its target audience: who, other than people who can read Chinese anyway, would find this translation a helpful entry into understanding Chinese literature? Is it a reference work, a handy guide, or an original, theorized view of the creative endeavors of Chinese writers? A few problems are immediately evident. Hong has adopted an orthodox mainland periodization which classifies literature from the New Culture movement to the late 1940s as modern and the literature from 1949 to the present as contemporary. This may come as a disappointment to readers who expect contemporary to refer to the more recent present. It also means that about half the book has little interest for most readers in English, who justifiably ignore the great bulk of literature produced in the 1950s and 1960s. Some readers may also find it a problem that Hong fails to credit any scholarly work on modern Chinese literature written in any language but Chinese and published anywhere but in China, the only exceptions being T. A. Hsia and C. T. Hsia. Written entirely within the conventions of mainland literary history, the first few chapters on the ideological debates of the 1950s and 1960s make uninspired reading. These debates were of huge importance to those involved at the time and still have considerable historical interest to specialists in literary politics. However, now that this period is receding ever faster into the past and is seen as an aberration rather than a harbinger of the future, it is doubtful whether anyone but a small handful of scholars remain interested. (Specialists, nonetheless, will notice that Hong's judgements on leftist and non-leftist factions of the 1940s and 1950s are carefully nuanced.) Biographical and critical remarks on individual writers and their work get under way in two chapters on poetry. Hong's welcome attention to poetry, a characteristic of traditional Chinese literary history, is backed by fine detail and analysis. Hong's approach in the four fiction chapters is more unconventional, starting with a list of writers who gave up creative writing in the 1950s and giving due attention to commercially successful writers such as Zhang Hengshui. Chapters on non-fiction prose and on drama are followed by a composite chapter on works subjected to critical attack in the lead-up to the Cultural Revolution (CR). Part 1 concludes with three chapters on the CR itself, ending with a closing chapter on the non-official writing of the 1970s. The inclusion of early works by writers such as Bei Dao and Duo Duo shows clearly that the socalled New Era Literature (here new period literature) which is usually said to have followed the collapse of the CR is actually a product of the CR, just as the origins of the revolutionary model theatre and its offshoots are in the 1950s and 1960s. For most readers, nevertheless, even this is remote history, and the real interest is in Part 2, especially in the best-selling novels of the 1990s. Hong begins Part 2 by tracing the gradual decline of poetry from the Today (Jintian) group to the grouplets that succeeded it in the 1980s. By spreading this discussion over several chapters, however, Hong disconnects the Today group from its role in the human rights activities of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and analyzes its impact as a literary movement only when its existence within China had come to an end. The four chapters on fiction are also oddly organized, so that Ah Cheng's king stories come after fiction by Jia Pingwa and Mo Yan. …