Fact and Fiction

Fact and Fiction is a novel Wang Anyi wrote in 1992, first published by People's Literature Publishing House in 1993, and one of her most experimental works. The book unfolds two threads in alternation through a structure of "cross-narration": one is "fictional history," a vertical bloodline traced from the narrator's mother's surname and family legends back through the ancient grasslands of Mobei, the Rouran of the Northern Wei, the Yuan dynasty, and the soil of eastern Zhejiang, pursuing her lineage generation by generation in a heroic tone that resembles a personal family epic; the other is "fictional society," a horizontal web of life relations, as the narrator returns to the Shanghai she inhabits and writes of longtang lanes, neighbors, school, her years sent down to the countryside, and her writing life, of how a family that moved to Shanghai from elsewhere became "outsiders" in the city, and of childhood loneliness, a tense mother-daughter relationship, and the fine texture of daily life. The two threads interweave and mirror each other: the vertical family story is like a tree, while the horizontal social relations ripple outward like water. Across these two "fictions" the narrator continually dismantles and explains herself, fusing metafictional self-reflection with realistic technique. She ultimately finds that constructing a satisfying family narrative for herself can better accommodate loneliness than verifying historical truth. The work bears clear autobiographical qualities and an archaeological curiosity, and is regarded as an important milestone in Wang Anyi's writing of Shanghai—and of Shanghai's "writing" of Wang Anyi.