This treatise on modernism and postmodernism establishes that modernists' faith in the cult of novelty inevitably led to its destruction. Exploring the paradoxical nature of the modernist tradition in literature and the arts, the author considers its aesthetic and moral contradictions.

From the preeminent writer of Taiwanese nativist fiction and the leading translator of Chinese literature come these poignant accounts of everyday life in rural and small-town Taiwan. Huang's characters -- generally the uneducated and disadvantaged who must cope with assaults on their traditionalism, hostility from their urban brethren and, of course, the debilitating effects of poverty -- come to life in all their human uniqueness, free from idealization.