About the Author

Julia Lovell teaches modern Chinese history at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of The Opium War: Drugs, Drama And The Making Of China, The Great Wall: China Against the World and The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature and writes on China for the Guardian, Independent and The Times Literary Supplement. Her many translations of modern Chinese fiction include, most recently, Lu Xun’s The Real Story of Ah-Q, and Other Tales of China.