Can Xue / Yu Hua

Overall summary

Can Xue —

The Hut on the Mountain

• Dreamlike, fragmented narrative

• Psychological instability and surreal imagery

Yu Hua —

One Kind of Reality

• Violent absurdist story

• Everyday brutality becomes normalized

Historical background

• 1980s avant-garde literature

• Reaction against socialist realism

• Post-Mao experimentation

Dates

• 1980s: Avant-garde movement

• Reform era literature boom

Important names

• Kafka

• Borges

• Western modernism/postmodernism

Theories / concepts

• Avant-garde literature

• Absurdism

• Postmodernism

• Narrative fragmentation

Themes

• Violence

• Alienation

• Psychological instability

• Breakdown of meaning

• Absurdity

• Trauma