Reading Sally Rooney in China
The popularity of her novels reflects important trends in Chinese society
Many Chinese bookshops stock tomes by Marxist theorists who decry capitalism’s flaws. Big-city booksellers sell fiction by and for young women, which dramatises quandaries of romance and careers. These days quite a few shops reserve shelf space for a writer who straddles the two genres: Sally Rooney, an Irish author whose celebrated novels combine feminist tales of urban life with earnest thoughts on capitalist exploitation.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Beautiful world, there are you”
From the December 17th 2022 edition
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