Death Fugue（死亡赋格）

“Anyone remotely interested in an insider’s untrammeled, authoritative vision of what’s going on in China will jump into this fascinating cauldron of a novel, at risk of being boiled alive.”
NICHOLAS JOSE, Sydney Review of Books
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Turkish: Füg, Dedalus Kitap (Turkey, 2024, tr. Serkan Toy)
English: Death Fugue, Restless Books (United States, 2021, tr. Shelly Bryant)
Italian: Fuga di morte, Fazi Editore (Italy, 2019, tr. Eugenia Tizzano)
Swedish: Dödsfuga, Bokförlaget Wanzhi (Sweden, 2019, tr. Rebecka Eriksson)
English: Death Fugue, Giramondo Publishing (Australia, 2014, tr. Shelly Bryant)
Chinese: 死亡赋格, INK Publishing Company (Taiwan, 2013)
Chinese: 死亡赋格, Cosmos Books Ltd. (Hong Kong, 2013)

Banned in China for its taboo allusions to the Tiananmen Square massacre, Sheng Keyi’s Death Fugue is a lyrical and explosive dystopian satire that imagines a world of manufactured existence, the erasure of personal freedom, and the perils of governmental control.

Synopsis

One morning a nine-story tower of excrement of unknown origin appears in the center of Dayang’s capital, Beiping. The government swiftly scrubs the scene of all evidence and hands down its final word: Do not ask questions; dissent will be punished. But the crowd gathered in Round Square only grows and soon explodes in unrest. Poet Mengliu and his girlfriend Qizi join the uprising, but thousands disappear in the brutal crackdown that follows, including Qizi, the newly appointed protest leader. Mengliu abandons poetry and revolution but never gives up hope that Qizi may still be alive.

Years later, on his annual journey in search of Qizi, Mengliu washes ashore in the idyllic country of Swan Valley, a world of dreamlike beauty, perfection, and youth. But the dream becomes a nightmare as he slowly begins to unravel the secrets of Swan Valley, discovering that the perfect society exists at a deep, inhumane cost.

Boldly absurdist yet eerily prescient, award-winning author Sheng Keyi’s Death Fugue barrels out of the void left by generations of state-imposed silence in modern-day China, where it remains banned from publication. It is a rogue artist’s answer to a profound question of our times: What is the role of art after atrocity?

REVIEWS
New York Times 2014The New York Review of Books 2014Ron Charles, The Washington PostColton Alstatt, ZYZZYVAJane Perlez, The New York TimesNicholas Jose, Sydney Review of BooksAmanda Calderon, Words Without BordersPhilip Wen, Sydney Morning Herald
Now a prominent novelist and a denizen of Beijing literary circles, Ms. Sheng eventually fashioned that turning point in contemporary Chinese history into a stomach-churning, exuberantly written allegory, “Death Fugue,” which recalls Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”
New York Times 2014
"From Tiananmen, Sheng’s novel moves into an imagined future one-party dystopia, a brave new world with Chinese characteristics that she calls Swan Valley. One thing the authorities did about it was to ban Death Fugue in China, but it circulates informally anyway and has been published in translation abroad. she should get an A+ for moxie, and has admirers in China among readers who can get hold of the book."
The New York Review of Books 2014
“Sheng is working in a tradition that includes George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood and other keen critics of human folly. But if Death Fugue nods to those predecessors, it’s fueled entirely by Sheng’s own elixir of genius and rage…. This infinitely twisty novel couldn’t elude Chinese censors, but it still managed to slip out into the world and shout its scorching critique of the ongoing humiliation of the human spirit.”
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Death Fugue considers communism and capitalism, courage and the spirit. It is the story of one person determining how they might create a better world, of a society debating the right path forward…. Death Fugue will be all too relatable to a Western reader. Entreaties for resistance while memories of injustice remain fresh are hardly unknown here. And when Beiping’s media leans on their favorite, counter-public-opinion experts to favor the police, when unmarked vans round up peaceful protesters, or when urban and rural citizens split over the value of revolt, Keyi’s world doesn’t seem distant.”
Colton Alstatt, ZYZZYVA
“Now a prominent novelist and a denizen of Beijing literary circles, Ms. Sheng eventually fashioned that turning point in contemporary Chinese history into a stomach-churning, exuberantly written allegory, Death Fugue, which recalls Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”
Jane Perlez, The New York Times
"Anyone remotely interested in an insider’s untrammeled, authoritative vision of what’s going on in China will jump into this fascinating cauldron of a novel, at risk of being boiled alive."
Nicholas Jose, Sydney Review of Books
“[Death Fugue] is full of clever observations, energy, wit, imaginativeness, and endless lush, colorful landscapes that toe the line between the beautiful and the fantastical. Its absurdity, while at times wholly unhinged, is also at times exciting and funny… ”
Amanda Calderon, Words Without Borders
“A withering, absurdist allegory of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 and the shadows the events have cast on a generation.”
Philip Wen, Sydney Morning Herald
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