Shanghai Baby - Softcover

Hui, Wei

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074346477X ISBN 13: 9780743464772

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2002

Synopsis

The gap that divides those of us born in the 1970s and the older generation has never been so wide. Dark and edgy, deliciously naughty, an intoxicating cocktail of sex and the search for love, "Shanghai Baby" has already risen to cult status in mainland China. The risque contents of the breakthrough novel by hip new author Wei Hui have so alarmed Beijing authorities that thousands of copies have been confiscated and burned. As explicit as Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer, " as shocking as "Trainspotting, " this story of a beautiful writer and her erotically charged affairs jumps, howls, and hits the ground running as it depicts the new generation rising in the East. Set in the centuries-old port city of Shanghai, the novel follows the days, and nights, of the irrepressibly carnal Coco, who waits tables in a cafe when she meets her first lover, a sensitive Chinese artist. Defying her parents, Coco moves in with her boyfriend and enters a frenzied, orgasmic world of drugs and hedonism. But, helpless to stop her gentle lover's descent into addiction, Coco becomes attracted to a boisterous Westerner, a rich German businessman with a penchant for S/M and seduction. Now, with an entourage of friends ranging from a streetwise madame to a rebellious filmmaker, Coco's forays into in the territory of love and lust cross the borders between two cultures -- awakening her guilt and fears of discovery, yet stimulating her emerging sexual self. Searing a blistering image into the reader's imagination, "Shanghai Baby" provides an alternative travelogue into the back streets of a city and the hard-core escapades of today's liberated youth. Wei Hui's provocative portrayal of men, women, and cultural transition is an astonishing and brave exposure of the unacknowledged new China, breaking through official rhetoric to show the inroads of the West and a people determined to burst free.

About this title

Review

"The New York Times" This book is one of the rst to portray Wei Hui's generation of urban women, born in the 1970s, as they search for moral grounding in a country of shifting values.

From the Publisher

Further information about 'Shanghai Baby'
First championed by the Chinese state media as a rising star of her generation, Wei Hui is now dubbed 'decadent, debauched and a slave of foreign culture. 'Shanghai Baby' was banned by the Chinese authorities in April 2000 and 40, 000 copies were publicly burned.

'Shanghai Baby' deals honestly with areas that are conventionally taboo, especially in its portrayal of the new woman in contemporary China. The novel arrives at a time when China's urban youth challenges her historic and traditional mores and very sense of self. The gap between the old and the new is typified by the wealthier, better-educated and mature one-child-family generation that is now impatient for recognition, empowerment and self expression.

Here is a beautifully written novel that champions female sexuality, dares to transgress convention and describes China on the brink of her own social and sexual revolution.

There has be early press interest in the translation of 'Shanghai Baby'in to English. The Times ran a piece in October 2000 describing it as: "a steamy Chinese novel in the Western style about life in contemporary China". In April 2001 The Economist wrote: "A semi-autobiographical novel, which explores the sexual awakening of a beautiful 26-year-old writer in China's livelist port city...a runaway bestseller despite ...its banning by the authorities."

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 074346477X
• ISBN 13: 9780743464772
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 272