<p>Literature created under and by a repressive regime is rarely<br>accorded the same respect as works that go against the party line. Yet,<br>as Richard King's <i>Milestones on a Golden Road</i> argues,<br>these works deserve serious attention as part of an attempt, however<br>misguided, to create a Chinese socialist culture.</p><br><br><p>King presents eight pivotal works of fiction produced in four key<br>periods of Chinese revolutionary history: the civil war (1945-49), the<br>Great Leap Forward (1958-60), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and<br>the post-Mao catharsis (1979-80). Taking its cues from the Soviet<br>Union's optimistic depictions of a society liberated by<br>Communism, the official Chinese literature of this era is characterized<br>by grand narratives of progress.</p><br><br><p>Addressing questions of literary production, King looks at how<br>writers dealt with shifting ideological demands, what indigenous and<br>imported traditions inspired them, and how they were able to depict a<br>utopian Communist future to their readers, even as the present took a<br>very different turn. Early "red classics" were followed by<br>works featuring increasingly lurid images of joyful socialism, and<br>later by fiction exposing the Mao era as an age of irrationality,<br>arbitrary rule, and suffering - a Golden Road that had led<br>to nowhere.</p><p><b>Richard King</b> is Professor of Chinese studies at the<br>University of Victoria, teaching Chinese literature and film, Asian<br>popular culture, research methods, and Chinese language. He is the<br>editor of <i>Art in Turmoil: The Chinese Cultural Revolution,<br>1966-76</i> (UBC Press, 2010).