Half a Lifelong Romance

Manjing is a young worker in a Shanghai factory, where she meets Shujun, the son of wealthy Nanjing merchants. Despite family objections and complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together. But disaster strikes, and the couple are torn apart. Eileen Chang was born in Shanghai in 1920. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to America in 1955 and died in Los Angeles in 1995. Karen S. Kingsbury taught and studied in Chinese-speaking cities for nearly two decades, and currently lives in Pennsylvania, USA. She has translated Love in a Fallen City for Penguin Classics, as well as other essays and stories by Chang.