Wang Kuo-wei

“Wang Kuo-wei is a unique figure in modern Chinese intellectual history who reflects within his own person some of the most complex aspects of China’s modern cultural crisis. There could, in fact, be no more demanding undertaking than an intellectual biography of Wan Kuo-wei… Dr. Bonner has achieved a profound empathic understanding of what might be called the cultural despair of one of China’s most interesting personalities; she has been able to use Wang Kuo-wei’s own quite unique angle of vision to illuminate many aspects of modern China’s cultural situation. This is the first biography of Wang Kuo-wei that succeeds in grasping his life as a comprehensible whole.”—Benjamin I. Schwartz