The Odyssey of Shen Congwen

Odyssey discusses Shen Congwen（沈从文，1902-1988）in terms of several pertinent questions in modern Chinese history and literature.

Shen is already well known to many readers in these fields as the young solider from West Hunan warlord armies who escaped what might literally have been a dead end in that career to become a celebrated writer, editor, and educator, until he turned to a third career as an antiquarian in the late 1940s.

The scope of Odyssey as a biography is inclusive in presenting all this in an authoritative account, scrupulously compiled fro a host of documents and interviews, many of the latter with Shen himself. The results should stand as a valuable reference on many facts and a judicious presentation of speculation on them.

Shen Congwen and his wife

As Kinkley states in the Introduction, he is after facts more than explanations, and the levels of detail which emerges gives the reader plenty of room to test speculation about the author against what can be documented.

As a dispassionate biographer Kinkley often summarizes relevant facts in an admirably cogent form, as when exploring Shen's situation on the eve of his suicide attempt in 1949. At other times, in doing justice to, for example, a myriad of possible motives Shen had for leaving West Hunan and going to Beijing, Odyssey demands more patience from the reader. Unprecedented as this study is in its scope and detail, it is not altogether fair to call it a pioneer biography, given the available biographical work done by earlier scholars.

The Odyssey of Shen Congwen, by Jeffrey C. Kinkley
Stanford University Press, 464 pages