Wang Xiaobo


Wang Xiaobo was a renowned contemporary Chinese novelist and essayist from Beijing.

Life

He was a sent-down youth in Yunnan during Cultural Revolution. From 1978 to 1982, he studied at Renmin University of China. He went to the United States to continue his education in 1984 and received a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1988. After his return to China, he taught at Peking University and Renmin University of China. He became a freelance writer in 1992. On April 11, 1997, Wang died of a heart attack in Beijing.

List of works

Wang Xiaobo wrote several novels, short stories collections and essays, some of which have been translated into English, French and Italian.

Novels

Writing style

He had been writing about the life of people and love, even sex in his understanding. He has unique vision. His diction is close to daily life but does not lack of literariness. As he said:
“...I believe readers will make a conclusion like that after they read. The theme is our life; and at the same time, they will agree that there is no one has ever written our life in this way...As our life should not be like what I wrote, but actually, it is.”

Attitude

Some people had commented Wang’s works that though they were interesting, they lack of a positive theme and can not inspire us, etc. And Wang responded:
“Though the author is a modest person, he can not accept those opinions. Being positive is one of our norm, but it should not be always mentioned. I think my duty is writing interesting novels as possible as I can, and should not add some deliberate sermonize. My writing attitude is to write some works for those people who read novels, not to teach undereducated youth...”