The King of Trees: Three Novellas: The King of Trees, The King of Chess, The King of Children - Softcover

Cheng, Ah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081121866X ISBN 13: 9780811218665

Publisher: New Directions, 2010

Synopsis

Three classic novellas―The King of Trees, The King of Chess, The King of Children―that completely altered the landscape of contemporary Chinese fiction.

When the three novellas in The King of Trees were published separately in China in the 1980s, “Ah Cheng fever” spread across the country. Never before had a fiction writer dealt with the Cultural Revolution in such Daoist-Confucian terms, discarding Mao-speak, and mixing both traditional and vernacular elements with an aesthetic that emphasized not the hardships and miseries of those years, but the joys of close, meaningful friendships. In The King of Chess, a student’s obsession with finding worthy chess opponents symbolizes his pursuit of the dao; in The King of Children―made into an award-winning film by Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell My Concubine―an educated youth is sent to teach at an impoverished village school where one boy’s devotion to learning is so great he is ready to spend 500 days copying his teacher’s dictionary; and in the title novella a peasant’s innate connection to a giant primeval tree takes a tragic turn when a group of educated youth arrive to clear the mountain forest. The King of Trees is a masterpiece of world literature, full of passion and noble emotions that stir the inner chambers of the heart.

About this title

About the Author

Ah Cheng, born in Beijing in 1949, is the pen name of Zhong Acheng. An accomplished fiction writer, painter, and screenwriter, Ah Cheng spent the Cultural Revolution in a small village in Inner Mongolia, where he painted the sheep and grasslands, and then on a State Farm in Yunnan province. During the 1980s he came to prominence as a member of the “primitive” or “seeking roots” literary movement. In 1992 he received the Italian Nonino International Prize for his writings, and in 1995 his Venetian Diary was honored in Taiwan. He has lived in several countries including the U.S., often not writing and working various jobs such as fixing bicycles and house painting. In recent years he has lived on the outskirts of Beijing and though he refuses to publish, he continues to write.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081121866X
• ISBN 13: 9780811218665
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208