Lust, Caution
by Eileen Chang
Lust, Caution is set in Shanghai during World War II, and brings to life the difficult choices people had to make between working with the occupying Japanese forces or resisting them. A novella, this short book is also a good way into the writing of Eileen Chang, with a love story at centre stage and a sense of the glamour of pre-Communist Shanghai. The book was turned into a movie by Ang Lee.
Recommendations from our site
“It’s impossible to spend any time in Shanghai without picking up an Eileen Chang book. In my thirty years of involvement with China, she’s gone from being completely banned and not available—not even having a plaque on the building where she lived in, which is still there in Shanghai—to having some sort of acceptance…I’m advocating that readers embrace her stylishness (in terms of both her personality and her writing), but there’s a lot more to her than that, and Lust Caution is a good way in.” Read more...
Paul French, Journalist
