Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu: Modern Tales of a Chinese Romantic

These translations—spanning a period of some thirty years, from 1937 until 1965—bring to life some of Xu Xu’s most representative short fictions from prewar Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Afterword illustrates that Xu Xu’s idealistic tendencies in defiance of the politicization of art exemplify his affinity with European romanticism and link his work to a global literary modernity.