Book Talk: Eileen Chang’s Naked Earth

The China Institute in American presents China Institute Senior Lecturer Ben Wang speaking about writer Eileen Chang’s life, the unusual circumstances surrounding Naked Earth’s writing, and the timeless precision of Chang’s prose.

One of the greatest and most loved of modern Chinese writers, Eileen Chang (张爱玲) illuminates the dark corners of the human existence with a style of disorienting beauty. Her late work Naked Earth (赤地之戀), originally commissioned as anti-Communist propaganda by the United States Information Service, is the story of two earnest young people confronting the grim realities of revolutionary change in the early years of Mao’s China. Unavailable in English for more than fifty years, it is a harrowing tale of perverted ideals, damaged souls, deepest loneliness, and terror.

At this event celebrating Naked Earth’s publication by New York Review Books (the first time it has been published outside of Hong Kong), China Institute Senior Lecturer Ben Wang will speak about Chang’s life, the unusual circumstances surrounding Naked Earth’s writing, and the timeless precision of Chang’s prose.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

For questions or to register by phone, please contact Aaron Nicholson 212-744-8181, ext. 138 or anicholson@chinainstitute.org

Register here.