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In Milestones on a Golden Road, Richard King presentspivotal works of fiction produced in four key periods of Chineserevolutionary history: the civil war (1945-49), the Great Leap Forward(1958-60), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and the post-Maocatharsis (1979-80). Taking its cues from the Soviet Union'soptimistic depictions of a society liberated by Communism, the officialChinese literature of this era is characterized by grand narratives ofprogress.

Addressing questions of literary production, King looks at how writersdealt with shifting ideological demands, what indigenous and importedtraditions inspired them, and how they were able to depict a utopianCommunist future to their readers, even as the present took a verydifferent turn. Early "red classics" were followed by worksfeaturing increasingly lurid images of joyful socialism, and later byfiction exposing the Mao era as an age of irrationality, arbitraryrule, and suffering - a Golden Road that had led to nowhere.