Volume 48, Number 4 · March 8, 2001
Writers in a Cold Wind
By Jonathan Mirsky
The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System
by Perry Link
Princeton University Press, 387 pp., $65.00; $21.95 (paper)
Early in 1979 the Chinese officials in charge of culture declared that the Maoist ban on nineteen traditional classics and sixteen foreign works, including Anna Karenina, was lifted. On the day the books became available at a Beijing bookshop, a line of peo-ple two miles long formed and within a week all 800,000 copies were sold. Fights broke out among the customers jostling to buy the books.
Review, 4235 words
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