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Han Shaogong




Han Shaogong (, 1953 ) is a prominent and innovative Chinese writer.

Han was born in Hunan , China . While relying on traditional Chinese culture, in particular Chinese Mythology , Folklore , Taoism and Buddhism as source of inspiration, he also borrows freely from Western literary techniques. He was once an enthusiastic Red Guard . Employed at a local cultural center after 1977 , he soon won recognition as an outspoken new literary talent. His early stories attacked the ultra-leftist degradation of China during the Mao Era ; they tended toward a slightly Modernist style. However, he reemerged in the mid- 1980s as the leader of an Avant-garde school, the "Search for Roots" or the '' Xungen Movement ''.

Han's work is influenced by Kafka and by the Magic Realism of Gabriel García Márquez . In 1987 , he published a Chinese translation of Milan Kundera 's The Unbearable Lightness Of Being .

He edited ''Hainan Jishi Wenxue'' ("Hainan Documentary Literature"), a successful literary magazine. He and other Chinese writers visited France in 1988 , at the invitation of the French Ministry of Culture; Han was invited back in 1989 but was denied permission to leave China until 1991 .