Summer of Betrayal - Hardcover

Hong Ying

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747532494 ISBN 13: 9780747532491

Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +

Synopsis

In the early hours of the morning, following the massacre in Tiananmen Square, a young poet, Lin Ying, flees the bullets, tanks and soldiers. When finally she arrives at the flat she shares with her lover Chen Yu, she finds him in bed with his estranged wife.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

At dawn on the June morning of 1989 following the brutal repression of the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Lin Ying, a young poet, flees the bullets and tanks, trying to get back home to her lover. Upon reaching home, she discovers him in bed with the wife he claimed he was divorcing. Reeling from this double betrayal, she wanders the nightmare that Beijing has become, until a fellow student offers her refuge in his bed.

In a tense atmosphere of political suspicion and desertion by their leadership, Lin Ying and her fellow demonstrators play out the ensuing months in a perilous dance of hedonism and defiance. Awash in the turmoil of the present and painful memories of the past, Lin Ying embraces sexuality as perhaps the last genuine freedom left to her-one that may inevitably lead to betrayal.

Fearless, passionate, and starkly erotic, this remarkable debut novel is a cri de coeur from a generation of Chinese "born to enact a tragedy." Banned in China, but nevertheless widely circulated there, Summer of Betrayal establishes Hong Ying as one of China's most outspoken and talented voices.

"A bold and compelling novel that flaunts China's prohibitions against public discussion of the Tiananmen events . . . a searing portrait of political defiance and sexual rebellion . . . powerful."-Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Hong Ying's prose . . . is both sensuous and lapidary, eloquently expressing the novel's wide emotional and intellectual range."-The New York Times Book Review

"Lin Ying becomes a meteor, describing a bright arc of poetry and sexuality through the dark months after Tiananmen before flaming out."-Chicago Tribune

"A fascinating and moving book."-The Times (London)

"Lovely and urgently political . . . Hong Ying has written a proud, spirited book which draws complex parallels."-Esquire (British edition)

Hong Ying was born into a sailor's family in 1962 in the city of Chongqing, China. In 1989 she entered the Lu Xun Writers' Academy in Beijing. She left China to study in London in 1991. She is also the author of seven collections of stories and novellas, four poetry collections, and two other novels. Summer of Betrayal, first published in Taiwan in 1992, has since been translated into ten languages.

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Chinese

About this edition

• Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +
• ISBN 10: 0747532494
• ISBN 13: 9780747532491
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1