The Best 20th Century Chinese Fiction Books

What were your criteria for choosing these 20th century Chinese fiction recommendations?

I chose these books because they moved me deeply — emotionally, intellectually, and even personally. Each of them left a lasting impression not just through their storytelling, but through the way they illuminate something essential about Chinese society, history, or identity.

They all meet a high standard of literary quality: strong characterisation, narrative innovation, stylistic distinctiveness and moral complexity. Some use satire, others lyricism or magical realism, but all of them are driven by a deep understanding of human psychology and social forces.

Just as importantly, these books tell you something about China, its contradictions, its transformations, its suffering and resilience. Whether set in the early 20th century, the war-torn 1930s or the Cultural Revolution, they offer valuable perspectives on how individuals navigate systems of power, tradition, and upheaval. For me, they’re not just great works of fiction — they are windows into the soul of a nation.

Other than being set amid the turbulence of 20th century China, do these five books have anything in common?

At first glance, these works are quite different in style and tone — from Lu Xun’s biting satire to Mo Yan’s mythic brutality, from Qian Zhongshu’s urbane wit to Yu Hua’s quiet devastation. And yet, they are united by several important threads.

First, they all grapple with the human condition under pressure — whether that pressure comes from political ideology, war, social conformity or personal trauma. The characters are rarely heroes in the conventional sense; they are flawed, conflicted and painfully human. Through them, these authors explore themes like disillusionment, survival, love, power, and the search for meaning.

Second, all five books embody a deep concern for truth. Whether in a cynical intellectual or a weather-beaten peasant, we encounter people trying to make sense of their world. The best literature doesn’t offer easy answers, and none of these books pretend to. They instead reveal the messy, often contradictory nature of human experience.

Lastly, while rooted in specific Chinese contexts, these books transcend cultural boundaries. They speak to universal questions about dignity, freedom, identity, and the longing to be seen. That’s what makes them great literature, not just important Chinese novels.

Let’s move on to your first recommendation, The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun.

Lu Xun, who was active in the early 20th century, is my favourite Chinese writer. His unparalleled insight into the national psyche remains unmatched. His prose is witty, razor-sharp and unflinching in its critique — yet never loses its essential humanity. The title character, Ah-Q, has become a byword in Chinese culture, a living symbol of self-deception, false bravado and the quiet tragedies of the human condition. When we were growing up, my sister and I even used to call our father “Ah-Q” — he was a pretentious man who liked to pose as grander than he really was. Kong Yiji is another example of a character who pretends to be somebody he is not. That’s the enduring brilliance of Lu Xun: he distilled psychological truth into unforgettable characters.

Often called “the surgical knife of the Chinese soul,” Lu Xun’s work is a harsh yet necessary mirror. His 1918 short story Diary of a Madman marked the beginning of modern Chinese literature, being the first to adopt the vernacular language and break away from classical conventions. He was a leading figure of the New Culture Movement and remains deeply embedded in Chinese education — his stories are still studied in school. I remember being especially struck by Gu Xiang (“My Old Home”), which explores memory, change and disillusionment through a deceptively simple visit back to one’s hometown.

There is no doubt: Lu Xun would not have survived under Mao’s regime. His fierce independence and moral clarity would have made him a target. But precisely because of that, he remains a towering literary and moral figure, whose voice continues to cut through the noise of nationalism, sentimentality and denial.

Your next book recommendation is Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu, which was first published in the 1940s.

Fortress Besieged is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century Chinese literature, and rightly so. I was introduced to it in the early 1980s by my first boyfriend, and while the novel holds emotional value for me, it also left a deep impression because of the writing, which felt unlike anything I had encountered before — ironic, urbane, and blisteringly sharp. It is a sharp reflection of Chinese intellectuals then and now. Qian Zhongshu has a rare gift for wit that skewers both individuals and society with equal elegance.

The novel follows Fang Hongjian, a young Chinese intellectual returning from Europe with a fake PhD, who stumbles into a farcical marriage and a disastrous university job. The famous metaphor in the title says it all: “Marriage is like a fortress besieged — those outside want to get in, and those inside want to get out.” It’s funny, poignant and ruthlessly observant.

I also enjoyed the satire and sharp observations of Fortress Besieged. It’s a refreshing antidote to romantic stereotypes: the hero is quarrelsome, the heroine is neither beautiful nor kind, and adversity doesn’t strengthen their bond at all.

Qian’s descriptions are wickedly precise. I still remember the passage where he writes about Tang Xiaofu, Fang’s romantic interest, describing her beauty as “a whiff of fragrance in a stinking world — it can only soften the stench, not remove it.” The novel is filled with such lines: beautifully crafted, painfully true. Fang himself is a perfect antihero — vain, indecisive, full of pretence, and yet strangely sympathetic. He’s a stand-in for a whole generation of educated, directionless men caught between East and West, tradition and modernity.

Your next book pick is Red Sorghum by Mo Yan, the second Chinese author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. It was turned into an award-winning film directed by Zhang Yimou.

Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum, first published in 1986, is a searing, genre-defying family saga that left an indelible mark on me. Although I don’t love all of Mo Yan’s work, this novel — his breakout masterpiece — remains my favourite. It’s bold, brutal and vividly imaginative, blending folklore, memory and myth into a fractured yet cohesive whole. The non-linear narrative structure, composed of five interconnected novellas, suits the story’s mythic tone and historical sweep.

Set during the Japanese occupation, the novel explores love, betrayal and survival through the lens of a rural family. The characters are morally complex and deeply human — nothing is black-and-white, which is very different from how the people who fought against the Japanese were described in books when I was growing up. In those books, the characters are all heroes, handsome and perfect human beings.

In Red Sorghum, Yu Zhan’ao, the narrator’s grandfather, is a bandit turned guerrilla fighter, capable of both ruthless cruelty and heroic leadership. He kills his lover’s husband to marry her, yet also becomes a respected patriot. Mo Yan doesn’t glorify or condemn him; he lets the contradictions stand. Dai Fenglian, the grandmother, is equally compelling. Fiercely independent and sexually assertive, she shatters the mould of the submissive rural woman. She is both loving and manipulative, driven by her own desires and deep maternal instincts. Even the villagers and resistance fighters are shown in shades of grey — capable of both bravery and barbarism. War, in Mo Yan’s vision, does not purify; it exposes.

The prose is lush, poetic and earthy. I still remember his phrase “华丽的肚肠子” (“gorgeous entrails”) — only Mo Yan could describe gore with such grotesque beauty. His magical realism creates a world that is hyperreal, where metaphor and reality are inseparable.

Above all, Red Sorghum is a meditation on human nature under pressure. It shows how ordinary people, when pushed to extremes, can become both monsters and heroes.

Let’s talk about your next book pick, To Live by Yu Hua.

To Live, first published in 1992, is one of the most quietly devastating novels I’ve ever read. It traces the life of Fugui, a spoiled son of a wealthy landowner who squanders everything and is forced to survive decades of political upheaval as a destitute peasant. His transformation from a feckless gambler to a stoic survivor is heartbreaking and deeply human. I’m particularly drawn to the older Fugui — he reminds me of my grandmother: resilient, uncomplaining, and astonishingly capable of enduring pain without bitterness. My grandma, who suffered so much, still believed that she was a lucky person.

To Live is steeped in quiet philosophy. What is the meaning of life, Yu Hua seems to ask? Sometimes, it’s simply to live. When life is stripped down to its rawest form, to persist becomes a kind of tragic heroism. One of the most striking scenes is an example of Yu Hua’s black humor: Fugui’s young son, Youqing, dies after donating blood to save a Communist official. Later, when Fugui visits the medical school where his son’s body was taken, the students who dissected the corpse casually invite him to eat mantou (steamed buns). The absurdity of grief and hospitality mingling in such a grotesque setting is chilling. It shows how deeply ideology has numbed empathy and distorted human values.

I’ve met Yu Hua a few times. He’s so funny, he talks the way he writes. I remember he talked about working as a dentist. He was so bored out of his mind every day looking in people’s mouths that he worried he would drill in the wrong place, so he made up stories to amuse himself.

That’s how he became a writer, by being a bored dentist?

Yes. The novel’s narrative style is deceptively simple, but its emotional impact is profound. To Live is not just about suffering — it’s about endurance, dignity and the quiet heroism of surviving.

When people who are not familiar with China ask me to recommend some Chinese fiction, To Live is usually the first book I suggest. It covers so much of China’s 20th century history but it’s a quick read, and I also like its central message — the value of an ordinary life, what it is to be human.

Good choice. I really like this book, and the dark humour in it, which can be really powerful and is important when you write a heavy story.

This novel has also been made into a film by Zhang Yimou.

Yes, a very successful film. I like both the films of Red Sorghum and To Live, but I do prefer the novels because they allow you to use your imagination.

We have come to your final pick of the best 20th century Chinese fiction books, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie.

This novel offers a refreshing and unexpected take on the Cultural Revolution. Rather than dwelling on trauma, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress tells a gentle, bittersweet story of awakening — intellectual, sexual and emotional. It’s about how literature can open a window to the world and, more importantly, to the self.

The Seamstress starts as a naïve village girl, but when two ‘sent-down’ youths secretly introduce her to forbidden Western novels, something shifts. Through Balzac and Flaubert, she begins to imagine a life beyond her narrow mountain village. It’s a beautiful metaphor for liberation.

This book has the feel of something inspired by the author’s own experience. Presumably he was one of the many urban youths sent to the countryside in the Cultural Revolution?

Yes, Dai Sijie was sent to a village in Sichuan, his home province, to work as a ‘sent-down’ youth. The novel was indeed inspired by his own experience. He later went to France to study. I find it particularly interesting how many Chinese-born writers living abroad, like Dai Sijie, create works that are more accessible to Western readers. This novel, while firmly rooted in the Chinese countryside, speaks to universal themes: desire, freedom and transformation.

The tone is charming, nostalgic and quietly radical. It doesn’t shout; it sings. And at its core, it reminds us that books are more than paper and ink — they are vessels of possibility, escape, and reinvention.

This novel was originally written in French. You yourself write in English. Do you feel that you can express yourself in a different way than when you write in Chinese?

Writing in a different language often brings about fresh perspectives. Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot in French, then translated it into English. In her memoir In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri reflects on her journey of learning Italian, and how she feels a sense of freedom writing in it. Writers choose or reject languages for different reasons. In a poignant essay titled “To Speak Is to Blunder”, my fellow Chinese-born writer Yiyun Li describes how she “disowned” her mother tongue as a way to detach herself from certain cultural and emotional burdens. I like her work very much, by the way. Ha Jin is another Chinese who writes in English, and I really enjoyed his novel Waiting.

For me, English represents hope. At 16, I was taken out of school by my family and put to work in a rocket factory. Bored to death while greasing machine parts, I decided to teach myself English as a means of escape. My only sanctuary within the factory compound was a rubbish dump around the corner from my workshop. Whenever I could, I would go there to study. Amid the buzzing flies and the stench rising from rotten food, I could feel my horizons expanding. English changed my life, and my adopted language allowed me to explore and express thoughts and ideas in ways that Chinese didn’t always permit.

As I mentioned, I find that the books of some Chinese writers who live abroad are much more palatable for international readers. For example, almost all writers inside China use the omniscient point of view, which I personally find very awkward. Whereas the writers who live overseas know the storytelling from both in and outside China, and they know how to tell the story using the best techniques, so they can take the best from both Chinese and Western traditions.

All five of your book recommendations are by male authors. If you were to pick some favourite Chinese fiction by female authors of the 20th century, what would you pick?

Liu Sola wrote a novella in 1985 called You Have No Choice, which totally broke the storytelling tradition — there is no obvious plot line. It is an avant-garde landmark in Chinese literature, about a group of young music students and their search for authenticity and self-expression in a rapidly changing society. A literary friend recommended this novella to me when I was still working at my rocket factory. I read in one go — I couldn’t put it down because it is so refreshing, original and different. It also marks the rise of female voices breaking patriarchal and ideological confines.

I am not sure if that novella has been translated, but Liu Sola’s novel Chaos and All That has been published in English.

Eileen Chang’s stories from the 1940s are very good. I think she was very insightful, especially about the relationship between men and women, even though her insight didn’t free her from the pain she suffered at the hands of lovers. I also used to be a huge fan of San Mao but I don’t like her anymore. When I was young, I was fascinated by her account of living in the Sahara desert with her Spanish husband. At that time there was no way I could travel, so her exotic world and romantic escapades fascinated me. There are many other 20th century female Chinese authors worth mentioning, for example Tie Ning, Zhang Jie and Ding Ling.

You yourself write across genres, from an oral history of the first fifty years of the People’s Republic of China, to a memoir, to a novel set in Shenzhen’s red light district. What are you working on at the moment?

I am revising a historical novel inspired by Qiu Jin, China’s first feminist and revolutionary — one of the most colourful and compelling figures in modern Chinese history. She loved to cross-dress, rode through town on her white horse, practised martial arts, and drank like a fish. And I am writing a novel about love and parenthood, what love means. It’s mostly set in China but the main characters are non-Chinese.