The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Wang Qiyao grows up in the crowded lane houses of Shanghai and, while still at school in the 1940s, is picked as a Miss Shanghai, a moment of fame that shapes the rest of her life. She becomes the kept woman of Director Li, and after 1949 lives on as an ordinary resident whose quiet days hide feelings that never settle. Through the Anti-Rightist years and the Cultural Revolution she plays mahjong in secret, takes lovers and brings up her daughter Weiwei. By the 1980s, past fifty, she has become a living piece of the newly fashionable nostalgia for old Shanghai, and around her the novel follows four decades of change in the city.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

China, 1940s–1980s

First published

1996 by Writers Publishing House

Author's age

42 when first published

ISBN

9780231143424 (Columbia University Press, United States)

9780231143431 (Columbia University Press, United States)