The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai
About
Wang Qiyao grows up in the cramped alleys of 1940s Shanghai, wins a beauty contest, becomes the mistress of a powerful official, and then watches as revolution, history, and time systematically dismantle everything she built. The novel follows her from the glamour of pre-Communist Shanghai through decades of political upheaval to the commercial frenzy of the 1980s — a single life that contains the entire story of modern China. Wang Anyi writes Shanghai as both city and character, treating its alleyways, fashions, and social rituals with the intimate knowledge of a native. The novel is epic in scope but intimate in focus — less interested in historical events than in how one woman navigated them. A portrait of Shanghai told through the woman who loved it best — and watched it become something she barely recognized.
