Written on Water [Paperback]

Now back in print, these witty, insightful ssays on fashion, cinema, wartime, and everyday life demonstrate why Eileen Chang was and is a major icon of twentieth-century Chinese literature.

Eileen Chang is one of the most celebrated modern Chinese novelists and essayists of the twentieth century. First published in 1944, and just as beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and her life as a writer and woman in wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong. With her vibrant yet meditative style and her sly, sophisticated humor, Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and of her own experiences as a part-time nurse. She also turns her thoughts to Chinese cinema, the aims of the writer, Peking Opera, Shanghainese food, culture, and fashion, all the while upending prevalent attitudes toward women and painting the self-portrait of a daring and cosmopolitan woman bent on questioning pieties and enjoying the pleasures of modernity, even as the world convulses in war and a revolution looms. The book includes illustrations by the author. Chang's constant, vivid presence in these essays allows the reader to step wholly into her mind—a collage of the universal and the personal, the minute and the infinite. —Daljinder Johal, Asymptote Journal

“One of the most anticipated books of 2023.” —The Millions

“Original, memorable and unlike anything else that has come from the era. A fine contribution to Chinese letters in translation.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Daily life, human interactions, and fashion are—particularly for 1940s China—considered female topics, and if Eileen ChanglB