Lu Xun
Lu Xun (Lu Hsun) is arguably the greatest writer of modern China. He abandoned the study of medicine because he thought he could change society more through writing (probably not a bad assumption in 1920’s China, or anywhere). Lu Xun wrote many of his major essays while living in Shanghai in the 1930’s. He became increasingly opposed to the Guomindang and in 1930 helped found the League of Left Wing Writers. He supported the Communist Party but never became a member. Lu Xu died of pulmonary tuberculosis on October 19, 1936.
Japanese author Oe Kenzaburo, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature, and first pen pal of American Documentary Film Maker Ken Burns, has called Lu Xun “the greatest writer Asia produced in the twentieth century.” Hailed by literary historians as the “Father of Modern Chinese Literature,” Lu Xun is best known in the West for his fiction and his satirical essays. But some of his most interesting works were written in the classical verse form, a great example of which is found in The Lyrical Lu Xun, by Dr. Jon Kowallis, one of the foremost authorities on this subject.
Lu Xun Works
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