张扬  著 

By Zhang Yang 

bestselling and beloved contemporary Chinese novel,  sold over 4.3 million copies since the 1980s. 

Author:  

Initially titled The Return, The Second Handshake caused its writer, Zhang Yang,  to be imprisoned by the Gang of Four when it first appeared. He would have  been executed if his sentence had not been overturned by party chairman Hu  Yaobang. (Hu was later purged; his death in 1989 would trigger the Tiananmen  Square protests.) The Second Handshake was published in a new edition in 1979;  its editor, Hu Yuping, has called this book "encyclopedic" for its breadth, taking  in "everything from international relations to human philosophy, from medicine  to atomic physics, from poetry to love, dipping into politics, military affairs,  economics and culture." Zhang Yang remains the head of the Hunan Writers  Association today; The Second Handshake is the only novel he has ever published. 

Introduction:  

This is a wistful, elegiac story about unfulfilled love, and a hard-hitting political  narrative about the development of the atom bomb, and the human cost of scientific  advancement. Ding Jieqiong (based on real-life Manhattan Project scientist ChienShiung Wu) is a complex, well-rounded heroine, sacrificing personal happiness for  the sake of human progress, caught between China and America, and her love for two  very different men. Historical events form a constant background to this novel. The  protagonists are involved in their own struggles, but it's made clear that they are very  much at the mercy of the wider developments surrounding them, from the Japanese  invasion of China to Roosevelt's death, and of course World War Two itself. We also  see China transformed, looking away from the West andincreasingly inward; the rather  romantic view of Communist society reads today like nostalgia for a lost innocence. 

At the heart of the novel is the development of the nuclear bomb, and the paranoia  that comes in its wake. Ding Jieqiong's ethical doubts about using such a destructive  weapon are captured in all their complexity, and the author efficiently shows how the  foundations of the Cold War were laid in the desert of Los Alamos.  

The protagonists are somewhat idealized Su Guanlan is six foot tall, boyishly goodlooking, and speaks fluent "London English", German and French. Ding Jieqiong  and Ye Yuhan are similarly attractive and intelligent. Yet for all their gilded youth  and privilege, world events prove too much for these unfortunate individuals, and by  the end they are left wondering at the ruins of their lives-in a final sequence, Ding  Jieqiong reflects on how an entire generation has been robbed of happiness.  

PUBLICATION: February 2018 

EXTENT: 240 thousand Chinese  words  

FORMAT: 170 x 240 mm Hardcover 

ISBN: 978-7-220-09552-8 

List Price: 68 RMB 

RIGHTS HELD: World. All Languages 

RIGHTS SOLD: Korean (Korea)