The dream is the color of cinnabar

Shen Tsungven (1902–1988) is one of the most significant representatives of modern Chinese literature. His works are translated into many languages ​​of the world and published in dozens of countries. This book is the first attempt to give the Russian reader any holistic idea of ​​the prose of Shen Center. The collection includes twelve stories and four chapters of autobiography, first translated into Russian, as well as the previously published novel “Border Gorodok” in the new edition. These works reflect almost two decades of the author’s work and are connected by the unity of the place - all events take place in the small homeland of the writer in the province of Hunan, one of the most beautiful and mysterious regions of China.
Naturalism, honesty, impartiality of the prose of Shen Tsunwan are organically combined with softness, lyrism, subtle humor, phenomenal ability to convey the smallest details of the world and subtle movements of the human soul. It is no accident that the writer is most often compared with A.P. Chekhov.

Outstanding Chinese writer Shan Tsungven (1902-1988) in his work constantly returned to the Western Hunani - the place where he was born and raised.
On the pages of his works, as if on the daguerrotype - a “mirror with memory”, an archaic, leaving the past, the world of the Chinese province of the first half of the twentieth century is captured.
The image of the small homeland so beloved by him, similar to the Falknera district of Yoknapatof, a tiny plot of land “the size of a postage brand”, becomes a kind of symbol in his prose.
In a specific place where the author’s memories are concentrated, the whole complexity of human life is concentrated, and private, it would seem, problems acquire a universal scale.

Life, in fact, is a weighty book with complex content, but it should read it to the end, slowly flipping through the pages.
Shen Tsungven