Wang Anyi 1954-

One of contemporary China's leading fiction writers, Wang was brought up in Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution (1966¡V76), she was sent down to the countryside in Anhui where she was later assigned to a local performing arts troupe as a cellist. Returning to Shanghai in 1978 she began her career as a writer while working for a children's magazine. She came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of short stories and novellas on themes of love (especially from a woman's perspective) and life in the countryside. Since the late 1990s, Wang has written a large number of short stories and essays on contemporary urban life. As in her best-known works, such as the award-winning Chang hen ge ªø«ëºq (Song of endless sorrow, 1995), most of these stories are set in Shanghai.

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