Weeds

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Translated by Matt Turner. Introduction by Nick Admussen. Edited by David Perry. In this new translation of a modernist master's most challenging and experimental writing--the first in nearly half a century--Matt Turner brings urgent life to Lu Xun's darkly surrealistic prose poems, fractured shards of memoir, and jagged-edged critique of a 1920s China shaken by existential doubt, political violence, and a literary revolution that reverberates to this day. Featuring an embossed cover and woodblock prints by Monika Lin, an introduction by Nick Admussen, and notes on the poems' historical and cultural backgrounds and on Lu Xun's role in the history of China's modernist woodblock print movement. Forrest Gander writes that "it would take a poet-translator as deft, daring, and refractory as Matt Turner to take on the sarcasm, playfulness, mystery, and aggressive invention of these poems in Chinese," and Yunte Huang writes that, "like a magnanimous host making room for a persnickety guest, Turner's English is a generous accommodation for the pique, pout, and poetics of the wild and protean imagination of a Chinese master."