Ge Fei (Chinese: 格非; pinyin: Gé Fēi; Wade–Giles: Ke Fei, born 1964) is the pen-name for Liu Yong (刘勇), a Chinese novelist who is considered one of the preeminent experimental writers during the late 1980s and early 1990s.^[1]

Biography

Ge Fei was born in Dantu, Jiangsu, in 1964. He graduated from East China Normal University in 1985. He received his PhD in 2000.^[2]

Works

His most prominent work is the novel Peach Blossom Paradise (人面桃花, Renmian Taohua, 2004), which explores the concept of utopia, and is laden with classical allusions.^{[citation needed]} The English translation was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2021. It is the first book of his Jiangnan Trilogy, of which the second book, My Dream of the Mountain and River (山河入梦 Shanhe Rumeng), was published in 2007. The third is Spring Ends in Jiangnan (春尽江南), published in 2011.^[3]

The title of Renmian Taohua is taken from a classical work, and has also been used by the director Du Haibin for his documentary on a gay club in Chengdu (2005). The English name for the film, Beautiful Men, is not a direct translation.

The novellas The Invisibility Cloak and Flock of Brown Birds were the first works by Ge Fei to become available in English. They appeared in 2016 in translations by Canaan Morse and Poppy Toland respectively.^[4] An English translation of Peach Blossom Paradise was published in 2020.^[5]