Literature created under and by a repressive regime is rarelyaccorded the same respect as works that go against the party line. Yet,as Richard King’s Milestones on a Golden Road argues,these works deserve serious attention as part of an attempt, howevermisguided, to create a Chinese socialist culture.
King presents eight pivotal works of fiction produced in four keyperiods of Chinese revolutionary history: the civil war (1945-49), theGreat Leap Forward (1958-60), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), andthe post-Mao catharsis (1979-80). Taking its cues from the SovietUnion’s optimistic depictions of a society liberated byCommunism, the official Chinese literature of this era is characterizedby grand narratives of progress.
Addressing questions of literary production, King looks at howwriters dealt with shifting ideological demands, what indigenous andimported traditions inspired them, and how they were able to depict autopian Communist future to their readers, even as the present took avery different turn. Early “red classics” were followed byworks featuring increasingly lurid images of joyful socialism, andlater by fiction exposing the Mao era as an age of irrationality,arbitrary rule, and suffering – a Golden Road that had ledto nowhere.
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