Ma Yuan

Ma Yuan: The Chinese Avant-Garde, Metafiction, and Post-Postmodernism in the works of Ma Yuan provides the most comprehensive study to date on one of Chinas most influential contemporary authors, Ma Yuan. By engaging in close readings of narratologically complex works of metafiction, the author offers a reappraisal of the role Ma Yuan played within the rise of postmodern fiction within China and offers new interpretive possibilities for the Chinese Avant-Garde movement of the 1980s through demonstrating that rather than being predominantly formalist word games or narrative traps, Ma Yuans works of metafiction functioned as Foucauldian heterotopias which allowed for the creation of distinctly Post-modern and Post-socialist possible worlds. This book also analyses Ma Yuans recent post-2000 output and in doing so explores the shifting dynamics of literary self-reflexivity and the Post-postmodern within the contemporary context of Xi Jinping era modernity. This book argues that Ma Yuans recent works display a distinct movement towards metamodern aesthetics alongside a rising anthropocenic awareness and eco-consciousness which offer key insights into the post-postmodern condition within a Chinese context.