Jiangnan

Jiangnan is the collected edition of writer Ge Fei's "Jiangnan Trilogy" (Peach Blossom Paradise, Mountains and Rivers in a Dream, and Spring Ends in Jiangnan), published in 2019 by Beijing October Arts and Literature Publishing House in a three-volume hardcover set, totaling about 930,000 characters. Conceived in the mid-1990s, the trilogy took seventeen years to complete and won the Ninth Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2015. Taking Jiangnan as its geographical and spiritual foundation, the novel invents the recurring "Peach Blossom Spring" image of "Huajiashe," letting the fates of one family across several generations unfold back and forth among revolution, construction, and present-day reality. The first volume, Peach Blossom Paradise, centers on Lu Xiumi, a young lady of an official family in Jiangnan in the late Qing and early Republic, tracing her life from the inner chambers to revolution and her rebuilding of "Puji" amid repeatedly shattered ideals and reality. The second volume, Mountains and Rivers in a Dream, turns to the 1950s and 1960s, depicting County Magistrate Tan Gongda's ambitions and setbacks as he builds water conservancy projects and does practical work. The third volume, Spring Ends in Jiangnan, comes down to recent decades, portraying the spiritual malaise and self-search of the poet Tan Duanwu's generation of intellectuals. Each volume stands alone, while the character and geographical threads are faintly linked, forming a long panorama that examines the dreams and fates of Chinese intellectuals across a century.