Eileen Chang occupies a unique position in modern Chinese literature. She was a popular writer with enduring appeal whose work has inspired successive generations. As a young woman in her mid-twenties, she wrote her most acclaimed stories in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The popularity of these works has seen major revivals in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and since the 1980s, in the Chinese mainland where her work had been banned. When she died in 1995, she had achieved near-cult status.