Loved and revered by college students throughout China, Wang Xiabo's, black humor and licentious satires have finally been translated into English. Hangling Zhang and Jason Sommer joined forces to translate Wang in Love and Bondage. This trilogy of novellas, "The Golden Age," "East Palace, West Palace," and "2015" were published in April by the State University of New York Press to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the writer's death. In many ways profoundly un-Chinese, Wang's work should resonate well with westerners. The novellas delve into issues of artistic censorship at the same time addressing somewhat salacious topics: Wang weaves tales of prostitution, homosexuality and sado-masochism into his stories.

Heavily influenced by western writing, Wang's "2015" begs comparison to Orwell's 1984 in its indictment of absurd social restrictions and the toll these regulations take on human behavior. In "2015" an artist in a futuristic society named "Uncle" paints without a license, which results in his arrest, imprisonment and mental collapse. In Orwell's vision of the year 1984, Winston Smith similarly risks extermination by attempting to remain human in face of a society run by "Big Brother."

Both Wang and Orwell faced stringent political situations in their lifetimes: Wang was born into Mao's Cultural Revolution; Orwell lived in Spain during Franco's Fascist military rebellion. The Maoist control of media parallels the far-from-independent BBC for which Orwell worked.

Both artists write as a warning to future generations about present and past social ills. Orwell wrote 1984 as a denunciation of media spin and propaganda, using characters that had become robotic shadows of human beings to do so. Conversely, Wang suggests that mind-control leads not to brainlessness, but rather to insanity.

-Melanie McGanney


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