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Ge Fei (Chinese: 格非; pinyin: Gé Fēi; Wade–Giles: Ke Fei, born August 22, 1964) is the pen name of novelist Liu Yong (刘勇), considered by many scholars and critics to be one of the most significant of the Chinese avant-garde writers that rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s.

Life and work

Ge Fei was born in Dantu, Jiangsu, in 1964. He studied Chinese literature at East China Normal University and, after graduating in 1985, began to teach there and publish short stories and novellas. He read widely during his studies, but has since noted that he was particularly influenced by Borges, Faulkner and Robbe-Grillet. Some of his early, more experimental works were translated into English in the 1990s, such as "The Lost Boat", "Remembering Mr. Wu You" and "Green Yellow".

After completing The Banner of Desire (Yuwang de qizhi), Ge Fei took a break from literary writing to concentrate on his academic career. He completed his PhD in 2000 and became a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

In 2004, Peach Blossom Paradise (Renmian taohua) was published, the first book of what has become known as the "Jiangnan Trilogy", which explores the concept of utopia and contains many allusions to Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber. An English translation of Peach Blossom Paradise was published in 2020 and selected as a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2021. The second and third books, My Dream of the Mountain and River (Shanhe rumeng, 2007) and The Last Spring in Jiangnan (Chunjin jiangnan, 2011), have yet to be translated into English. For this trilogy, he was one of the winners of the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2015.

In 2016, The Invisibility Cloak (which had won both the Lu Xun Literary Prize and the Lao She Literary Award in 2014) was the first of his longer works to be translated into English. A translation of an earlier novella from 1988, Flock of Brown Birds, was also published later in 2016.

Selected bibliography

Novels

• 《敌人》 (1990). The Enemy
• 《欲望的旗帜》 (1995). The Banner of Desire
• 《人面桃花》 (2004). Peach Blossom Paradise, trans. Canaan Morse (New York Review Books, 2020).
• 《山河入梦》 (2007). My Dream of the Mountain and River
• 《春尽江南》 (2011). The Last Spring in Jiangnan
• 《月落荒寺》 (2019). Moonfall on the Deserted Temple

Novellas and short stories

• 《追忆乌攸先生》 (1986). Remembering Mr. Wu You
• 《陷阱》 (1987). The Trap
• 《迷舟》 (1987). The Lost Boat
• 《大年》 (1988). New Year's Eve
• 《褐色鸟群》 (1988). Flock of Brown Birds, trans. Poppy Toland (Penguin, 2016).
• 《青黄》 (1988). Green Yellow
• 《边缘》 (Bianyuan) (1992). The Margin
• 《锦瑟》 (1993).
• 《相遇》 (1993). The Encounter
• 《隐身衣》 (2012). The Invisibility Cloak, trans. Canaan Morse (New York Review Books, 2016).
• 《望春风》 (2016). Waiting for the Spring Breeze

In anthologies and journals

• "The Lost Boat" (trans. Caroline Mason), in The Lost Boat: Avant-Garde Fiction from China, ed. Henry Zhao (1993)
• "Meetings" (trans. Deborah Mills), in Abandoned Wine: Chinese Writing from Today (1996)
• "Remembering Mr. Wu You" (trans. Howard Goldblatt); "Green Yellow" (trans. Eva Shan Chou); "Whistling" (trans. Victor H. Mair), in China's Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology, ed. Jing Wang (Duke University Press, 1998)
• "Encounter" in Tales of Tibet: Sky Burials, Prayer Wheels, and Wind Horses (2001)
• "Ring Flower" in Chinese Literature Today (2017)
• "Song of Liangzhou" in Chinese Literature Today (2017)

Scholarly publications

• 《小说叙事学》 (1992). Narratology of the Novel
• 《卡夫卡的钟摆》 (2004). Kafka's Pendulum
• 《文学的邀约》 (2010). The Invitation of Literature
• 《雪隐鹭鸶——金瓶梅的声色与虚无》 (2014). Egret Hidden in the Snow - The Sound, Color and Nothingness of Jin Ping Mei

Awards and honors

• 2012: Dream of the Red Chamber Award for The Last Spring in Jiangnan
• 2014: Lu Xun Literary Prize for The Invisibility Cloak
• 2014: Lao She Literary Award for The Invisibility Cloak
• 2015: Mao Dun Literature Prize for Jiangnan Trilogy

References

1. ^ "Ge Fei and His South of Yangtse Trilogy". Taylor & Francis. 2018-09-03. doi:10.4324/9781315626994-49/ge-fei-south-yangtse-trilogy-andrea-riemenschnitter. Archived from the original on 2024-06-13.
2. Zhao, Y. H. (1992). "The Rise of Metafiction in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 55 (1): 90–99. ISSN 0041-977X.
3. ^ Cai, Yongchun (2019-06-01). "Borges and Ge Fei: Transfiguring the poetics of atemporal labyrinth". Neohelicon. 46 (1): 303–329. doi:10.1007/s11059-019-00480-7. ISSN 1588-2810.
4. "Subversion, transcendence, and rejection history in the fiction of contemporary Chinese avant-garde writers Su Tong, Yu Hua, and Ge Fei - UBC Library Open Collections". open.library.ubc.ca. Retrieved 2025-01-03.
5. Yu, Zhansui (2017). Chinese Avant-garde Fiction: Quest for Historicity and Transcendent Truth. Cambria Press. ISBN 978-1-60497-968-8.
6. ^ Abrahamsen, Eric. "Ge Fei". Paper Republic.
7. Lin, Qingxin (2015-12-01). "Imitation and Transgression: Ge Fei's Creative Use of Jorge Luis Borges's Narrative Labyrinth". Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences. 8 (4): 649–669. doi:10.1007/s40647-015-0083-x. ISSN 2198-2600.
8. "格非：小说是过往记忆的出口(图)". web.archive.org. 2011-05-21. Archived from the original on 2011-05-21. Retrieved 2025-01-06.
9. Leung, Laifong (2016-07-28). Contemporary Chinese Fiction Writers: Biography, Bibliography, and Critical Assessment. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-51619-4.
10. "Ge Fei zeroing in on inspiration-Tsinghua University". www.tsinghua.edu.cn. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
11. Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces (1 ed.). Hong Kong University Press. 2020. pp. 117–128. ISBN 978-988-8528-36-3.
12. Publisher's site for Peach Blossom Paradise (Retrieved 7 February 2021).
13. "The Invisibility Cloak: An Interview with Ge Fei". The Paris Review. 2016-11-14. Retrieved 2025-01-03.
14. Chatwin, Jonathan (2016-09-01). ""Flock of Brown Birds" by Ge Fei". Retrieved 2025-01-03.
15. Fei, Ge; Goodman, Eleanor (2014-03-01). "Ring Flower". Chinese Literature Today. 4 (1). doi:10.1080/21514399.2014.11834018. ISSN 2151-4399.
16. Fei, Ge; Laughlin, Charles A. (2014-03-01). "Song of Liangzhou". Chinese Literature Today. 4 (1). doi:10.1080/21514399.2014.11834021. ISSN 2151-4399.

External links

• Ge Fei home page at https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/ (in Chinese)

• 1964 births
• Living people
• Writers from Zhenjiang
• East China Normal University alumni
• Chinese male novelists
• Chinese male short story writers
• Educators from Zhenjiang
• Mao Dun Literature Prize laureates
• 20th-century Chinese short story writers
• Short story writers from Jiangsu