This book studies one of the most important figures in modern Chineseintellectual history Chinas greatest modern writer Lu Xun 18811936. Histrenchant criticisms... » 

This book studies one of the most important figures in modern Chineseintellectual history Chinas greatest modern writer Lu Xun 18811936. Histrenchant criticisms of the China of his day still speak directly to what canbe called without hyperbole the current crisis in philosophical and politicalthought in the Peoples Republic. It is also a study of a nonWesternintellectuals struggle in a time of crisis to make practical sense ofthe Darwinian Revolution a revolution not limited to the West.Although Lun Xun died more than sixty years ago his work is still alive inChina more so than any American writer of the 1920s and 1930s is in the U.S..He is viewed paradoxically as both an official icon and as a patron saint ofdissent. This book is therefore about Lu Xun both in his lifetime and in hissecond lifetime and it looks to his third. But it is not just about Lu Xun.It is about Lu Xun and evolution. As a philosophical critique of Lu Xunsthought it looks to Lu Xuns struggle to make practical sense of evolution acontradiction that forces eitheror questions on the Chinese and on us all. «