| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

David Der-wei Wang. The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2004. Pp. vii, 402. $24.95.

This book by David Der-wei Wang offers reflections on violence in modern Chinese fiction and history by a leading scholar in the field. The essays are a tribute to the author's impressive learning, ranging in coverage from well-known literary figures such as Lu Xun and Mao Dun to more obscure writers from Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. Wang offers insightful readings of these authors that will be of much interest to specialists in the field. The essays will be less appealing to nonspecialists, who will have to work their way through necessary but tedious descriptions of literary works some of which are of dubious merit, and who are likely to experience some frustration at the author's personalized and, on occasion, arbitrary interpretations. The book has much of value to offer to historical understanding, but the insights need filtering through critical historical evaluation. Wang shares in a tendency of contemporary literary criticism to substitute fiction for history, and to privilege its fictions as a basis for totalizing claims upon the past.

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