Until now little of China's massive literary output of the last thirty years has been available to American readers. This landmark volume presents a generous sampling in translation of the literature written in the PRC from 1949 to the present. Included here are more than 200 selections: poems, stories, essays, a hsiang-sheng (comic dialogue), and excerpts from novels, plays, movie scripts, and an opera. Literature of the People's Republic of China offers a fascinating glimpse into Chinese life and demonstrates the struggle of creative writers to be true both to their art and to their country's revolution.--From the publisher.