Jin Ba(1904-2005)
- Writer
- Producer
Jin Ba is one of China's most acclaimed modern novelists. Born into a
wealthy family, he received a broad education in China, graduating in
1925, and traveling to France in 1927-28. Early in life he became a
committed anarchist and socialist, and in France wrote his first novel,
Miewang [destruction] (1929), a tale of romance and revolution. Ba is
best known for his trilogy Jiliu [torrent] (1931-40); its first volume,
Jia, was translated into English as Family (1958). Enormously popular
with China's young readers at the time, these semi-autobiographical
novels attack the traditional Chinese family structure, pitting age
against youth and Confucian orthodoxy against individualism in a saga
of familial decline. His other works include two other trilogies
(1931-33; 1941-45), many single novels, e.g., Han ye (1947, tr. Cold
Nights, 1978), short stories, essays, and his memoirs, Suixiang lu
(1979, partially tr. Random Thoughts, 1984).
