A Madman's Diary
Lu Xun · 1881–1936 · China
Originally Kuangren Riji (Chinese) · translated by Julia Lovell
Why it matters
A man becomes convinced his neighbors are cannibals, and that Chinese tradition itself has been eating people for millennia. Lu Xun's ferocious debut, the first story in vernacular Chinese, launched modern literature with a scream.
At a glance
short story collectionsatire
Difficulty 6/10fast pace16 pagesUnreliable narrator and dense allegorical layering compressed into a few pages.
