Remembering 1942

Sweeping, humorous, and moving tales from one of contemporary China’s greatest writers.

The bestselling and award-winning author of novels satirizing contemporary China, Liu Zhenyun is also renowned for his short stories. Remembering 1942 showcases six of his best, featuring a diverse cast of ordinary people struggling against the obstacles—bureaucratic, economic, and personal—that life presents. The six exquisite stories that comprise this collection range from an exploration of office politics unmoored by an unexpected gift to the tale of a young soldier attempting to acclimate to his new life as a student and the story of a couple struggling to manage the demands of a young child. Another, about petty functionaries trying to solve a mystery of office intrigue, reads like a survival manual for Chinese bureaucracy. The masterful title story explores the legacy of the drought and famine that struck Henan Province in 1942, tracing its echoes in one man’s personal journey through war and revolution and into the present.

Each story is rich in wit, insight, and empathy, and together they bring into focus the realities of China’s past and present, evoking clearly and mordantly the often Kafkaesque circumstances of contemporary life in the world’s most populous nation.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Howard Goldblatt is a literary translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction from mainland China and Taiwan, including Nobel Prize–winner Mo Yan, five of whose works are published by Arcade (The Garlic Ballads; The Republic of Wine; Big Breasts and Wide Hips; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh). He has also translated works by Liu Zhenyun (I Did Not Kill My Husband; The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon; Remembering 1942, which are published by Arcade), Huang Chunming (The Taste of Apples), and Chen Ruoxi (The Execution of Mayor Yin). He taught modern Chinese literature and culture for more than a quarter of a century. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.