"This volume offers a survey of Chinese literature in the second half of the twentieth century. It has three goals: (1) to introduce the figures, works, movements, and debates that constitute the dynamics of Chinese literature from 1949 to the end of the century; (2) to depict the reality of Chinese cultural politics; and (3) to observe the historical factors behind the interplay of literary (post)modernities in the Chinese communities on the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas."--BOOK JACKET.