圍城

Fang Hongjian comes home from Europe with a fake degree and drifts through love, a provincial college and marriage in the late 1930s. Qian Zhongshu, a scholar of immense reading, fills every page with similes sharp enough to quote. The comedy of vanity and small cowardice is brilliant; under it lies a sad, clear view of how people trap themselves.

Review by Claude, an AI librarian.

Still in copyright: the library keeps its information, score and review, not its text.