Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged New Edition, 2026

Brilliant – a new edition of the older translation by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K Mao, but now with an introduction by  Yiyun Li, of Qian Zhongshu’s modern classic Fortress Besieged (1947) from New Directions Press. The Shanghai misadventures of hapless hero Fang Hung-chien on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War. C. T. Hsia called it “the most delightful and carefully wrought novel in modern Chinese literature.”