The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang: Republican-Era Martial Arts Fiction by John Christopher Hamm (review)

The following is the first paragraph of my review in Twentieth-Century China, Volume 46, Number 3, October 2021.

John Christopher Hamm's The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang: Republican-Era Martial Arts Fiction brings the topic of genre fiction off the sidelines of modern Chinese literature and into center field. The clever and perceptive narrative revolves around the novelist Xiang Kairan (向愷然 1895–1957), who wrote under the pen name Buxiaosheng (不肖生) or "The Unworthy Scholar" and is considered to be the father of Republican-era martial arts fiction (武俠小說 wuxia xiaoshuo). John Christopher Hamm establishes a scholarly approach to Xiang Kairan that, on the one hand, pays homage to the nostalgia that martial arts fiction often evokes in general readers and, on the other, newly conceptualizes the oft-discussed foundations of modern Chinese literature. Moreover, Hamm presents an enlightening characterization of the publishing networks that formed the basis for Chinese genre fiction. The book is a relevant reminder that Chinese genre fiction, especially considering our current age of translating and promoting it to global audiences, came of age during the commercialization of literature in 1920s Shanghai.

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