Love in a Fallen City

Love in a Fallen City

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3.94 of 5 stars 3.94  ·  rating details  ·  518 ratings  ·  74 reviews
A New York Review Books Original

“[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” The New York Times

"With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the f...more
Paperback, 320 pages
Published October 10th 2006 by NYRB Classics (first published 1938)
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Community Reviews

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will
Jun 27, 2008 will added it
This was a fascinating read, although I didn't finish a couple of the stories/novellas. Chang's subject is primarily human relationships, more specifically love with its ability to destroy as well as unite, and she approaches them unflinchingly and with a great eye for detail. But she also renders life in Shanghai with such vividness and specificity that the book almost seems to represent her love for the city, theme and form and setting united, etc. Shanghai is presented very much as a boundary...more
Motheaten
留情/ Mercy: The story starts out with tension between a mature age couple over the issue of the husband's ex-wife. While visiting relatives, the tension gradually eases as the couple is praised, advised, and commented on their close marital relationship. Despite the inevitable conflicts between a couple, at the end of day, what matters is the care and understanding they have for each other, that the marriage may just be more than an economic exchange.

茉莉香片/ Jasmine Tea: A melancholy story in which...more
Beth Ann
Chang crafted prose full of precise description that is so beautiful and often sad that I hurt to read it. Perhaps that's fitting for a book full of melancholy tales. None of her characters find any lasting happiness. They are separated from others due to gender, class, and time. Men and women are no longer sure of their place in relationships, society, or work. Love affairs bring temporary connections, but no lasting comfort, and often repercussions. A modernizing China offers no guidelines. Ch...more
Megan
Such gorgeous, gorgeous writing. Definitely love the feeling that you're being told a story rather than reading one (ie. Chang starts off her first two tales by implementing the burning of incense or brewing tea and when you've finised them you're left feeling hazy about your own future or feeling bitter about certain circumstances in your own life.) Going to eventually check out more of her works.

for a more thorough review


Jennifer
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Mizuki Genshou
Love In a Fallen City is a collection of Chang's most well known novella: Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier, Love In a Fallen City, The Golden Cangue, Sealed Off and Red Rose, White Rose. So fine are these stories, I suggest that if you planned to read only one single book by Chinese female author for once in your entire life, read Love In the Fallen City. This book is no doubt the best of the very best which had ever been penned by a Chinese female author. Although I admit some readers might...more
Stephen
I admire Eileen Chang's writing. She occupies an important place in the history of twentieth century Chinese literature. And yet, when I finished this excellent collection of some of her most acclaimed stories, I found that the plots and characters quickly fading from my mind. Just two or three days after finishing, I am hard-pressed to summarize coherently any of the six or seven stories in this book. This is strange because as I am reading Chang I invariably feel she quite brilliantly captures...more
Susan
I've seen the movie of one of the novellas in this collection, but that was years ago and my memory doesn't always serve me well. So it was like I heard the story for the first time. I just love this book and all the short stories/novellas the editor chose. Most of the stories are translated by Karen Kingsbury, but one was even translated by Chang herself, who wrote in both Chinese and English. I particularly loved the stories "Love in Fallen City" and "Red Rose, White Rose", which is the movie...more
Mitzi
I'm not sure how this title ended up on my To Read list, but I'm glad it did. This was a collection of novellas and short stories by Eileen Chang, well known in China, but not in America, although she moved here in her 30's. All of the stories deal with love, marriage, and money or stature. I imagined she was China's Jane Austen, though the mood tends to be darker, and the endings don't always end happily--so perhaps it would be better to compare her to Edith Wharton.
I have to admit it wasn't t...more
Patrick McCoy
Eileen Chan is best known for the naughty film version of her novel Lust, Caution directed by Ang Lee. However, I was intrigued by what I had read about her books before that production saw the light of day. But I didn’t get around to reading her short story collection, Love In A Fallen City, until I had already seen the infamous film version. Nonetheless, I found this collection of stories taking place in Hong Kong during the war or after the war very intriguing and exotic. These were fatalisti...more
Meghan Fidler
This is my first experience with Ms. Eileen Chang. I would recommend others to experience Ms. Chang too.
By far the most intriguing elements of these stories were her descriptive terms. From "chicken fat yellow" to the "small, solid gold pendants of her earrings like two brass nails nailing her to the door, a butterfly specimen in a glass box, bright-colored and desolate," the essence of her powers of attribution is worth study.

In her own introduction to the text, Chang explains that "In the s...more
Ruby Oh
It's almost unbearable to just sit here and read through (some)those infuriatingly ignorant reviews, which insolently neglects the beauty of Chang's work.

Chinese is indeed very different from English,I understand that a lot could be lost in translation, but what the readers should really be doing is BACKGROUND RESEARCH.Have you ever heard of the phrase"Brevity is the soul of wit". Chang write short stories, but every single word she mustered, along with the title, YES THE TITLE(every single titl...more
Gordon
Eileen Chang did a remarkable job at expressing the unique gender differences, positions, and expectations in The Golden Cangue. This is the only section of the book that I have read, and it was recommended to me, and now I see why. Being unfamiliar with past Chinese culture, one can really gain an understanding on how difficult it was to be a woman in a male dominated society in past China. Because the protagonist is a woman, and since Chang is a woman, the reader really gets a sense of how the...more
Emily
Eileen Chang's nearly poetic prose is what drew me to the writings in this book. She has such a command of language use and her short stories often evoke sadness. The short story "Sealed Off" and the novella "The Golden Cangue" were both extraordinary. Through subtle interaction between characters, Chang can create a real tone of sadness in the reader. In "Sealed Off", the tramcar and the shut down city serves as an extended metaphor throughout the story. The contrast of the tramcar in motion ve...more
Margaret
The four novellas and two short stories in this collection of Eileen Chang's work illustrate Hong Kong in the middle of the 20th century. The translator makes a point in the introduction that while many other authors were banned in mainland China for portraying strong political opinions, Chang avoids the opinions and the banning. What Chang's sampling of work in this collection lacks in outright political tone is made up by the twisted and complicated relationships between characters. At times t...more
Lorraine
An anthology of 20th century Chinese stories. She has only recently been discovered by American readers. Her stories take place primarily in the 1940s in Shanghai or Hong Kong. I am so happy to have discovered her so I can broaden my understanding of Chinese culture. All of the stories, but one has been translated from Chinese. "The Golden Cangue" was translated by her.

The Golden Cangue examines the life of a woman who is forced by her family into a loveless marriage. She grows mad after years...more
Sasha Martinez
One of the first NYRB Classics I heard of—in tandem with John Williams’ Stoner —was Eileen Chang’s collection of novellas Love in a Fallen City. My bibliophilic enabler Aunt Anne sent me this book late last year, and it’s taken me this long to settle down and read it. And, you know, it was awesome.

For purposes of brevity [sorely lacking in my corner of the internet], this post is going to focus on the title novella. Which is, well, one of the best nerve-wracking, most quietly and dignifiedly ten...more
Ann M
Why is everyone bitter and horrible in Chinese stories? I read one story, Jasmine Tea, which has nothing to do with Jasmine Tea.
Jenn
Borrowed this from the library after seeing Lust, Caution. She's bleak, very bleak.
Jenny
I wanted to like this book more than I actually did because a) she’s a female Chinese writer b) writing during the first half of the 20th century c) while China was under Japanese rule and Shanghai and Hong Kong are crumbling around her. But her writing style was too halting and abrupt for my taste (I don’t know how much of it is in the translation). All I know is events and plot move too quickly with little time for character development. A lot of people die very quickly and as the body count r...more
Kate Levin
Beautiful but cold.
Matteo Cavelier
This powerful collection of short stories by the "fallen star of Chinese literature" is a must-read for serious readers who like a literary challenge.
Chang touches upon some of the most marked juxtapositions of 20th century China, mainly the contrast between East and West and that between traditional and modern, in many of her stories in this book. She provides an interesting take on the rapid societal change and "europeanization" of China in the 1920s, where many of her characters try to achiev...more
Emily Wilkerson
I had to read "Love in a Fallen City" and "Red Rose, White Rose" for the East-West unit in my comparative literature class and I loved them so much that I had to read the rest of the collection. What I find most appealing about her writing is affinity for beautiful, evocative descriptions that feel like literary candy. I tend to dog-ear pages with quotes that I like and so much of this book is dog-eared because of passages like this one from "Red Rose, What Rose:" "She was wearing a long dress t...more
Amy Do
Chang's stories are dynamic and panoramic. Her characters are moving, interesting, alive and multi-dimensional, often passionate and unpredictable. They are believable and understandable even though they come from a different culture and time than most of us. The stories's settings are exotic and unique, often in Shanghai and Hongkong around the years of transitioning to more Westernized cities. The endings are often bittersweet. The language soft and calm. The clever descriptions short, selecti...more
Danica
I re-read this on a recommendation from a friend, and although I came away with a clearer understanding of what transpired in certain pieces (Love in a Fallen City, The Golden Canque), I had the same problem sustaining interest in the stories as I did two summers ago. Once again, a translation problem? The style is poetic at first but tiresome after a certain period of time, mostly because the poetics of Chang's writing style (at least in translation) lies not in its precision, i.e. of unearthin...more
Dewey Norton
Brilliantly written, deep insight into the charater of the people in the stories, but all are about people who are deeply troubled in life and all the stories have a sad ending, like Richard Ford in these respects. No real insight into what was happening politically in the fallen city, or what being in a fallen city meant, evidently so that she would not incur the wrath of the Japanese occupation including her husband, an administrator for the Japanese.
Louise
Eileen Chang connects this collection of short stories together by the common theme of troubled relationships. The turmoil of the relationships in these stories mirror the changes taking part in China during that time.

While I always felt a sense of dread when starting each new story, knowing that it'll never end in happily ever after, I was also eager to see what twists and turns the characters would go through in their quest for love.
Leslie Shimotakahara
Just finished reading Love in a Fallen City, while I was travelling in Hong Kong ... It was particularly delightful to read Eileen Chang's famous novella while visiting the Repulse Bay Hotel in Hong Kong, where the piece is set ... My full review can be read at www.the-reading-list.com
Wes
Eileen Chang writes from a feminine perspective with an eye for the truth about love, usually doomed by external circumstances that go largely unseen. She focuses on people and everyday life yet somehow evokes the real feeling of the period (and those unseen external circumstances). Her often hard-to-accept truths will cut your heart more than break it. But you'll be convinced. She herself has an interesting background, too.
Shana
I’m not usually a short story kind of person but as you can see, I’ve been trying to give them a try. Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (translated by Karen S. Kingsbury) had a few gems but some of the stories I had to skip over after reading a few pages. My favorites were probably the first two. They’re kind of hard to understand if you don’t have a good amount of background knowledge of Hong Kong, for example.
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The World's Liter...: Love in a Fallen City 倾城之恋. Eileen Chang 49 20 Jun 07, 2012 09:52pm  
Love in a Fallen City and Other Stories (Paperback)
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Eileen Chang (pinyin: Zhang Ailing, traditional Chinese: 張愛玲) was born to a prominent family in Shanghai (one of her great-grandfathers was Li Hongzhang) in 1920.

She went to a prestigious girls' school in Shanghai, where she changed her name from Zhang Ying to Zhang Ailing to match her English name, Eileen. Afterwards, she attended the University of Hong Kong, but had to go back to Shanghai when H...more
More about Eileen Chang...
Lust, Caution: The Story Lust, Caution and Other Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) Red Rose, White Rose (Penguin Mini Modern Classics) The Rice Sprout Song 半生緣 (Half A Lifetime)

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