Introduction: Corruption, Realism, and the Return of the Political Novel
Introduction: Corruption, Realism, and the Return of the Political Novel
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about corruption and realism in political novels in late socialist China. It analyzes five Chinese works of political fiction, including Lu Tianming's Heaven Above, Chen Fang's Heaven's Wrath, and Wang Yuewen's National Portrait. The chapter discusses each novel's storyline, analyzes its corruption case and its relation to realism, and evaluates its contribution to the discourse on realism. It also argues that the broadening of the idea of corruption is more a matter of linguistic usage and freedom of expression catching up with very old ideas of corruption as a general social decay.
Keywords: political novels, China, corruption, realism, Heaven Above, Heaven's Wrath, National Portrait, linguistic usage, freedom of expression, social decay
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