A Global Masterpiece
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'Fortress Besieged' is often referred to as the greatest modern Chinese novel. Such a categorisation - true though it probably is - risks boxing-away from Western attention a novel that is bigger than that in both scope and influence.
The novel's comic (anti-)hero Fang Hung-Chien hails from a province near Shanghai during the pre-Japanese occupation Republic of China. At the book's opening, he is returning to his homeland after several years of abortive study in Europe, with only several books and a fraudulent degree certificate to show for it. Zhongshu traces his first several years back in China through a couple of unrequited romantic dalliances amongst the Shanghainese elite, a doomed teaching post at a mediocre inland university, and the eventual collapse of an ill-advised marriage. The Sino-Japanese war, the glamour of 1930s Shanghai and lush provinces of Southern China provide the book's rich and significant background.
'Fortress Besieged' is ultimately a darkly comic novel, but attempting to classify it absolutely would be to overlook the incredible range of Zhongshu's writing. Perhaps the book's most impressive fact is the seamless evolution of its tone and style as Hung-Chien's world changes. Zhongshu mixes elegant prose, penetrative psychology and fantastically funny characterisation to create a book that feels significantly bigger than its 400-odd pages. Not that that should put you off - providing you don't feel the need to follow up every one of the many footnotes, the text reads for the mostpart smoothely and gracefully. It is an American translation however, and so produces some occasionally curious turns of phrase that sound a little out-of-place in early 20th Century China. This does little to lessen the overall impact of the novel though.
Zhongshu's own formidable education in East and West shines through in his beautifully woven tapestry of reference - literary, artistic, social and historical - which spans Asia, Europe and America with ease. It is this quality of fusion, exemplified by the very genre of the novel - suspended between Bildungsroman and Chinese epic - that elevates this powerful and humerous book above just the Chinese national canon to make it a truly Global masterpiece.
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