Love in a Fallen City

Love in a Fallen City (傾城之戀) is a 1943 Chinese-language novel by Eileen Chang. The translation is included in the New York Review of Books "Classics" series. The story focuses about a love story that triumphed during the wartime Hong Kong. Scholar Nicole Huang suggests that Eileen Chang's "most important literary legacy from the 1940s is her construction of an alternative narrative of war, one that contradicted the grand narratives of national salvation and revolution that dominated the wartime literary scene." Synopsis The story is set in 1940s Shanghai and Hong Kong. Bai Liusu is a beautiful divorcée who lives in Shanghai. Upon experiencing a failed marriage, Bai Liusu's large and extended family feels she has shamed the family through divorce which resulted her situation at home to become unbearable. The story then begins with Bai Liusu receiving news of her ex-husband's death and her refusal to attend the funeral. Fan Liuyuan is a bachelor who had just returned from England and was working closely in the mining business with Mr Xu, the matchmaker Mrs Xu's husband. While Mrs Xu attempted to introduce Bai Liusu's sister, Bai Baolu, to Fan Liuyuan, Fan became interested in Bai Liusu instead. When Fan Liuyuan left to Hong Kong for work, Bai Liusu follows to Hong Kong to win the love of Fan in hoping to get a legitimate marriage status and economic stability.