A Madman's Diary: Bilingual Edition, English and Chinese 狂人日记

Lu Xun 鲁迅 Bilingual Study Series, #1

This edition of Lu Xun's Chinese classic A Madman's Diary features both English and Chinese side by side for easy reference and bilingual support. The Lu Xun Bilingual Study Series includes a study guide and additional materials for each book in the series.

Published in 1918 by Lu Xun, one of the greatest writers in 20th-century Chinese literature. This short story is one of the first and most influential modern works written in vernacular Chinese and would become a cornerstone of the New Culture Movement. It is the first story in Call to Arms, a collection of short stories by Lu Xun. The story was often referred to as "China's first modern short story".

The diary form was inspired by Nikolai Gogol's short story "Diary of a Madman, " as was the idea of the madman who sees reality more clearly than those around him. The "madman" sees "cannibalism" both in his family and the village around him, and he then finds cannibalism in the Confucian classics which had long been credited with a humanistic concern for the mutual obligations of society, and thus for the superiority of Confucian civilization. The story was read as an ironic attack on traditional Chinese culture and a call for a New Culture. The English translation is provided courtesy of the Marxists Internet Archive.

《狂人日记》是鲁迅的一篇短篇作品，收录在鲁迅的短篇小说集《呐喊》中，讽刺了中国封建礼教和中国人的陋俗。它是中国第一部现代白话文小说，首发于1918年5月15日4卷5号《新青年》月刊。鲁迅自己说："《狂人日记》很幼稚，而且太逼促，照艺术上说，是不应该的。" "我自己知道实在不是作家；现在的乱嚷，是想闹出几个新的创作家来。我想，中国总该有天才，被社会挤倒在底下，破破中国的寂寞。"

这本有英文和中文的翻译。