Named as one of the Four Main Classical Novels of China, A Dream of Red Mansions is the only novel to address the role of women in China's history. The tragic romance, set in the powerful Jia clan, has captivated readers for centuries. Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu are the protagonists of this story. An effeminate young man, Baoyu grew up in the company of the women in the Jia clan and does not fit into the traditional archetype of a strong, masculine patriarch. Though seemingly weak and fragile, Daiyu, Baoyu's cousin, embodies an unyielding independent streak in her attempt to find her place in the Rong Mansion. Despite their differences, these two characters find comfort and love in each other, united by their inability to fit into the expectations of feudal China. Framing their story are the other members of the household: Wang Xifeng, Baoyu's manipulative cousin-in-law; Baochai, another cousin of Baoyu's who is destined to marry him; and Jia Zheng, Baoyu's strict father. Witness the ways of an aristocratic family that takes their luxuries for granted, and find out that life in the Red Mansions is nothing more than an unsustainable dream!

Ever hard-working and resourceful, the Chinese have always explored various raw materials to provide for their daily necessities. In the process, they invented things of practical use (mirrors and umbrellas) and economic value (silk and porcelain). In fact, the porcelain became so well loved that Westerners decided to call the country that produced china 'China'! Today, China's great treasury also contains bronzeware, jade carving, embroidery, ornamental knots, paper cuttings, snuff bottles and face masks. Learn about these interesting details and more: * The Silk Route as well as the Pottery and Porcelain Route of old China. * The multitude of Chinese characters and idioms related to jade. * Bronze artefacts unearthed at Qin burial site.

Hu Feng, the ‘counterrevolutionary’ leader of a banned literary school, spent twenty-five years in the Chinese Communist Party’s prison system. But back in the Party’s early days, he was one of its best known literary theoreticians and critics—at least until factional infighting, and his short fuse, made him persona non grata among the establishment. His wife, Mei Zhi, shared his incarceration for many years. F is her account of that time, beginning ten years after her and Hu Feng’s initial arrest. She herself was eventually released, after which she navigated the party’s Byzantine prison bureaucracy searching for his whereabouts. Having finally found him, she voluntarily returned to gaol to care for him in his rage and suffering, watching his descent into madness as the excesses of the Cultural Revolution took their toll. Both an intimate portrait of Mei Zhi’s life with Hu Feng and a stark account of the prison system and life under Mao, F is at once beautiful and harrowing. With support from English PEN This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme supported by Bloomberg. English PEN exists to promote literature and its understanding, uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and promote the friendly co-operation of writers and free exchange of ideas. For more information visit www.englishpen.org.

This book studies the reception history of Western literature in China from the 1840s to the present. Qi explores the socio-historical contexts and the contours of how Western literature was introduced, mostly through translation and assesses its transformative impact in the cultural, literary as well as sociopolitical life of modern China.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Demanding and offering tribute is a most common feature in human societies and nothing special to China. In the course of the development of Neolithic and later societies social classes have developed where persons who achieved superior positions first could demand 'presents' or tribute from neighboring societies they defeated and then, with the assistance of sturdy 'servants' from their own people. China was certainly no exception to that principle and one of the first terms for tax was thus 'gong', tribute. In China's early, 'feudatory' social system, tribute was demanded from lower political entities, and the mutual 'political' relations were already highly developed during the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BCE). This system of 'inner Chinese' relations became a sort of matrix when China expanded and achieved contact with countries which were more or less independent, and thus the 'tribute system' evolved. The individual case studies in this volume focus on the latest manifestations of the tribute system in late Imperial China.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers Soon to be a Showtime/Paramount+ series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov From the number one New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel 'A wonderful book' - Tana French 'This novel is astonishing, uplifting and wise. Don't miss it' - Chris Cleave 'No historical novel this year was more witty, insightful or original' - Sunday Times, Books of the Year '[A] supremely uplifting novel ... It's elegant, witty and delightful - much like the Count himself.' - Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 'Charming ... shows that not all books about Russian aristocrats have to be full of doom and nihilism' - The Times, Books of the Year On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all? A BOOK OF THE DECADE, 2010-2020 (INDEPENDENT) THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A DAILY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF BILL GATES'S SUMMER READS OF 2019 NOMINATED FOR THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS WEEK AWARD