The Clash Between Personal Fate, the Future, and Society in Ge Fei’s Jiangnan Trilogy

Ge Fei’s novels, both those written in his avant-garde period in the 80s and those published later after his "traditional, realistic turn", are all imbued with a strong sense of the individual’s fate as constantly rebuffed by history and by society. Especially in his Jiangnan sanbuqu (Jiangnan trilogy 2004, 2007, 2011), the main characters share a common commitment to the society they are living in, some of them bravely engaging their lives in the achievement of historically significant endeavours or at least in a personal quest for self-accomplishment: however, the introspective/subjective narration subtly elaborated by the author shows how their fate is ineluctably shaded by any kind of constraints and threats, both to their personal autonomy and to the fulfilment of their ambitions. Ge Fei’s sophisticated narrative, blending techniques drawn from both Chinese tradition and Western fiction, manages to display a multifaceted view of modern Chinese history as dispersed with false projections and corrupted utopias, where the strive for social and individual liberty is doomed to failure. Both in revolutionary China at the beginning of last century and in contemporary People’s Republic, human existence reveals all its frailty in the eternal clash between personal “life plan” and the prognostication of a collective future.