The experimental literary production of the People's Republic of China during the 1980s, which was freed from many of the aesthetic strictures of the Mao era, deserves more scholarly attention. Zhansui Yu's monograph aims to help fill this gap by focusing on the avant-garde fiction of Su Tong, Yu Hua and Ge Fei. For Yu, this fiction achieved two broad aims. First, it critiqued the revolutionary teleology inculcated through decades of PRC propaganda by subverting their epic clichés and narrative morphologies, thus laying bare the ways in which previous propaganda promoted a false history. Second, it featured the first sustained expression of “transcendence” in both premodern and modern Chinese literature; here Yu extols an existentialist vision of the human condition balanced on the fragile precipice of non-being.

This is one of few monographs on Chinese literature that features a sustained engagement with the thought of Martin Heidegger. Given the penchant for cosmic reflection apparent in these authors’ work, Heidegger's philosophy makes for an intriguing, if sometimes limiting, critical lens to examine them. Yu argues that both premodern Confucianism and modern Maoism promoted a secular moral optimism that imbued nearly all literary expression with a historicist purpose. The result was that Chinese literature, from time immemorial, was never quite able to question the ostensible positive moral lessons of historicism, on one hand, and could not provide a sustained outlet for aesthetic expression that centred on the transcendent themes of human existence, on the other.

The introduction historically situates his argument in the post-Mao era. After laying out his theoretical framework in the first chapter, he features individual chapters on each of the three authors. The chapter on Su Tong examines the novella “Opium Family” (Yingsu zhi jia), the novels Boat to Redemption (He'an), My Life as Emperor (Wo de diwang shengya), and Rice (Mi). The chapter on Yu Hua looks at Cries in the Drizzle (Zai xiyu zhong huhan), To Live (Huozhe), and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (Xu Sanguan mai xue ji). Chapter four, on Ge Fei, analyses Enemy (Diren), On the Margin (Bianyuan), and Flag of Desire (Yuwang de qizhi). For Yu, these works reveal the mendacity of received histories, the distorting effects of authoritarianism on the human personality, and the search for revelation that transcends mundane concerns. The fifth chapter brings the three writers in dialogue with one another, focusing on all three authors’ engagements with “extreme” aesthetics, violence, and historical and ontological ambiguity. A brief epilogue, which judges Chinese avant-garde fiction to be the most accomplished genre of Chinese literature to come out of the post-Mao era, concludes the book.

Yu's argument that “Confucianism,” broadly construed, bore responsibility for a pervasive moral optimism and lack of transcendence in premodern China invites questioning. The traditionalist canon itself is rife with expressions of despair; the Confucius presented in The Analects (Lunyu) is not always a joyful sage happily wedded to moral convictions. He bemoans his failure to become utilized as a political counsellor and painfully grieves the tragic death of his prized disciple Yan Hui. Yu is on more solid ground when excoriating an analogous optimism in Maoism, codified as “revolutionary optimism” (geming leguan zhuyi). Recent scholarship has done much to complicate the cultural manifestations of the Mao era beyond the critical lens of totalitarianism without shying away from the period's punctuated brutality and tight ideological control. Given the moral passion with which Yu argues his case, these critical adumbrations seem irrelevant to his broader argument. Yu consistently decries the totalizing tendencies of Mao-era ideology; however, for some readers, his recuperative turn toward the normative value of “transcendence” may resemble yet another form of universalizing thinking. He convincingly makes the case that the common themes between these writers warrant a collective analysis for them.

Yu's painstakingly thorough reading and research will reward those seeking a broad introduction to the wide oeuvre of these three writers. As such, the chapters serve as a suitable catalyst for debate and discussion in university classes that cover these authors, as many of their works have been translated. For Chinese scholars curious about the thought of Heidegger, this book provides a handy and useful introduction.