Dissipation

This short novel by one of China's leading female writers is an intimate portrait of a woman's life, caught up in a rapidly shifting world.

Dissipation is the story of Su Xiaohui, a young woman desperate to create a better life for herself. Leaving behind her friends and family in Shanghai, she travels to Malaysia, where her wealthy aunt and seemingly ideal husband offer her a chance to fulfill her dreams. But when her mother is taken ill ten years later, Xiaohui finally returns home. She finds herself in a bewildering city, infused with the images of a life she thought she had left behind. When loneliness leads her back to her former lover, her tenuous relationships with those around her are severely tested.

Dissipation asks a crucial question: Should we try to recreate the past? In heart breaking, beautiful language the novel describes Xiaohui, her experience of going back, and how she finds herself facing unexpected extremes of emotion and desire.

Tang Ying is an award-winning author. She was born in Shanghai and graduated from the Chinese Department of East China Normal University in 1982. She is currently a freelance writer and a member of the Chinese Writers' Association. Her first novel Why in Such a Hurry was published in 1986, and since then she has published numerous short-story collections, novels and novellas. Her several novels have been adapted into films and dramas. Tang Ying is also an accomplished film-maker and Director of Fringe Festival, which is an independent contemporary theatre festival of Shanghai. She has great ability for describing the fate of city women during times of change, as well as the emotional bonds formed by city residents undergoing the shock of social upheaval. Her works have contributed to the emergence of an urban literature previously lacking in China, and have come to be known as the representatives of a "new civic literature".