Jeffrey C. Kinkley's new book, Visions of Dystopia in China's New Historical Novels, serves as a further extension of the Euramerican academic literature on an important, if to a certain degree contested, form of writing in the PRC, namely, new historical fiction (xinlishi xiaoshuo). While others working in English have produced monographs on this quasi-genre before, for instance Lin Qingxin (Brushing History against the Grain, Hong Kong University Press, 2005) and Howard Y. F. Choy (Remapping the Past, Brill, 2008), Kinkley's contribution stands out for its, one might say, grander historical, multiregional scale. By not limiting his attention solely to the literary emplotment of dystopian themes in Chinese new historical fiction from the 1980s up until the present, and by bringing into the discussion the shared links this quasi-genre has with narrative explorations of dystopia in the Slavic and Anglophone literary worlds, as well as links to Latin American magical and post-magical realism, Kinkley highlights, on the one hand, the transhistorical scope of dystopian anxieties, whilst simultaneously pointing out that “China's recent dystopian historical novels constitute a fresh and distinctive strain within it” (italics added) (xii). When one considers the growing visibility of contemporary Chinese literature on the world stage, and the influence of Anglo-European and later Latin American “Boom” fiction on many Chinese writers, Kinkley's consideration of these literatures together seems most timely.

The book is divided into six chapters, the first of which explores a possible framework for a “global dystopian novel,” before moving on to a general discussion of New Era and post-New Era literature from the PRC. It then ends with a short biographical précis of the key authors and works to be examined. While there is no real surprise in the authors chosen (all the usual suspects are here: Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Wang Anyi, Han Shaogong, Su Tong, Ye Zhaoyan and Ge Fei, as well as a few lesser known – in the English language at least – authors such as Li Rui and Zhang Wei), Kinkley should be praised for the sheer number of works considered: 17 core texts, including respective film adaptations, as well as a number of secondary pieces.

The second and third chapters delve into a discussion of temporality, or rather the lack of historical moorings and the attendant disorienting experience of times past as narrated in the main texts (and their corresponding films). Kinkley's central question in these two chapters is: how do readers relate to, and engage with, the history presented in the novels when the narrative construction of yesteryear is deliberately mystifying, out of sync, and at times wholly illogical and without clear temporal references? Are the novels about the pre-1949 revolutionary period or about the heyday of socialist China (the 1950s)? Or are they about the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), the post-Mao boom years, or a near-future 21st-century China beset with environmental and societal calamities? In most cases, as Kinkley argues, it is difficult to tell, or purposefully ambiguous; in other instances, time and history are mythologized. But whatever the case, for Chinese new historical fiction, the defamiliarization of history is most certainly pervasive (pp. 34–35). The literature discussed by Kinkley undoubtedly bears this out, perchance giving truth to a line from an earlier short story by Ge Fei that says that “history is power” (“A Flock of Brown Birds” Hese Niaoqun, p. 33).

The fourth and fifth chapters enlarge the scale of the discussion, first bringing into the mix Slavic and Anglophone dystopian literature (specifically We [Zamyatin], Brave New World [Huxley], 1984 [Orwell], among a few others), before focusing on Latin and Caribbean works and their potential Chinese corollaries. Families, social, communal and village groups, and their concomitant dysfunctional relationships, are the precise concern in chapter four. Kinkley aims to highlight the primary differences he sees between Chinese new historical novels and their global dystopian counterparts, these being: (i) the lack of a pervasive “Big Brother” and the (at times unwitting) collusion with authority often seen amongst the intelligentsia; and (ii) the downplaying of “space” in favour of “historical change” (here, Kinkley stands in contrast to Lin and Choy, both of whom see “place” and “locality” as central actors in PRC new historical fiction). Chapter five continues this discussion on social and moral dysfunction by focusing on the issue of “luan” or chaos. As is perhaps by now well known, this term has great significance in the Chinese context, historically and politically. The entire obsession over the maintenance of order in the PRC today underscores the continuing fear of societal disorder. Whether aphoristically expressed as the need for a “harmonious society” (hexie shehui), or, and more recently, as a need to return to (socialist) ideological “correctness,” it seems that “luan” is perhaps ever-present in the background for many cultural producers in the PRC. Indeed, Kinkley contends that “China's new historical novels appear to fear raw social chaos above all” (p. 157). While this may be debatable, it is true that more and more works by the authors discussed do in fact end on rather ambiguous notes, suggestive at least of the destruction of order wrought by the socio-economic and environmental changes the PRC is undergoing.

The final chapter, “The end of history, dystopia, and ‘new’ historical novels?,” takes into account the changed trend(s) in PRC literature over the last decade or so, acknowledging the reality that new historical fiction does not (perhaps never did) possess much by way of cultural currency amongst young Chinese readers today. If we accept, as Kinkley states, that new historical fiction sought to “induce readers to take history seriously” (p. 197), then the lack of concern for the past amongst Chinese readers is certainly not a characteristic exclusive to the PRC. In truth, one would most likely be hard-pressed to find “global readers” willing to seriously engage with history via literature. This, then, answers the question of the chapter title: history and dystopian concerns are at an end, on a global scale; “‘life’ disappoints” (p. 207).

Overall, this is an articulate, thought-provoking, and important contribution to the study of contemporary PRC literature, useful for research and classroom teaching. The flow of the argument from chapter to chapter culminates in a rather depressive denouement, but such is the situation for literary and cultural production in our postmodern pastiche societies. The “global turn,” whether in literature or the visual arts, does call into question the historical certainties that most societies seem wont to hold onto, and certainly China's new historical novels serve as a key manifestation (iteration?) of this “glocal” (post?) dystopian malaise. And while the comparative framework by which Kinkley brings together disparate literatures from across the world does reinforce the claim that there are (once were) shared utopian concerns and dystopian fears that transcend time and space, the Chinese works discussed are “distinctive” insofar as they remain grounded in a Chinese locality, however global that is becoming.