Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-269) and index.

Preliminary Materials / H.Y.F. Choy -- Introduction Narrative And Space:A Cartography Of History / H.Y.F. Choy -- Chapter One. Regional Romances And Family Fables: From Root Search To New Historicism / H.Y.F. Choy -- Chapter Two. The Outlying And The Peripheral: Myths Of Migrants And Minorities / H.Y.F. Choy -- Chapter Three. From The Country To The City: Nostalgia For The Hometown / H.Y.F. Choy -- Chapter Four. The Bodily Text And The Textual Body: The Violence Of History / H.Y.F. Choy -- Conclusion Back(Ward) To The Future: Toward A Retro-Fiction / H.Y.F. Choy -- Appendix What. Is Held And In Whose Hand? An Etymological Reexamination Of Shi / H.Y.F. Choy -- Bibliography / H.Y.F. Choy -- Index / H.Y.F. Choy.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

The most prominent literary phenomenon in the 1980s and 1990s in China, historical fiction, has never been systematically surveyed in Anglophone scholarship. This is the first investigation into how, by rewriting the past, writers of Deng Xiaoping’s reform era undermined the grand narrative of official history. It showcases fictions of history by eleven native Chinese, Muslim and Tibetan authors. The four chapters are organized in terms of spatial schemes of fictional historiography, namely, regional histories and family romances, discourses on diaspora and myths of minorities, nostalgia for the hometown in the country and the city, as well as the bodily text and the textual body, thus broadly covering the eternal themes of memory, language, food, sex, and violence in historical writing.