Lu Xun

China's leading literary modernist, Lu Xun (b. 1881 Zhou Shuren in Shaoxing, d. 1936 in Shanghai) pioneered writing in vernacular Chinese at a time when classical Chinese was still China's dominant literary language. Best known outside of China for the biting satire of his short fiction--in particular The True Story of Ah-Q and Diary of a Madman from his landmark 1923 collection A Call to Arms (1922)--he was also a prolific essayist, translator, and critic. Weeds (1927) collects Lu Xun's prose...See more

China's leading literary modernist, Lu Xun (b. 1881 Zhou Shuren in Shaoxing, d. 1936 in Shanghai) pioneered writing in vernacular Chinese at a time when classical Chinese was still China's dominant literary language. Best known outside of China for the biting satire of his short fiction--in particular The True Story of Ah-Q and Diary of a Madman from his landmark 1923 collection A Call to Arms (1922)--he was also a prolific essayist, translator, and critic. Weeds (1927) collects Lu Xun's prose poetry and features some of his most radically experimental writing. Lu Xun was also an activist, playing a key role in China's New Culture Movement and the League of Left-Wing Writers and supporting the careers of many young writers, though he retained a critical distance from the time's party politics. See less