Mao Dun Books
Mao Dun (1896–1981), born Shen Dehong in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, was a prominent Chinese novelist, literary critic, and cultural figure. A leading founder of Chinese realist literature, he served as chairman of the Chinese Writers Association.
Known for: Midnight, Spring Silkworms, The Lin Family Shop
Books by Mao Dun
Midnight
What happens to a society when money moves faster than conscience, politics serves profit, and ordinary people are swept into forces they barely understand? Mao Dun’s Midnight is one of the great real...
Spring Silkworms
Spring Silkworms by Mao Dun is a powerful short story about rural Chinese families whose survival depends on one fragile seasonal gamble: raising silkworms. Set in the early twentieth century, the sto...
The Lin Family Shop
Mao Dun’s The Lin Family Shop is a brief work with the sweep and force of a social novel. First published in 1932, the story follows the owner of a small shop as he struggles to survive in a harsh com...
Key Insights from Mao Dun
Capitalism Creates Motion and Instability
A society can look energetic on the surface while becoming dangerously fragile underneath. One of Midnight’s most powerful ideas is that modern capitalism generates enormous movement—money circulating, factories expanding, markets fluctuating, fortunes rising and falling—but that this movement often...
From Midnight
Wu Sunfu Embodies Modern Ambition’s Limits
The most dangerous form of confidence is the kind that mistakes ambition for mastery. Wu Sunfu, the novel’s central capitalist figure, is not a cartoon villain but a complex embodiment of modern ambition. He is intelligent, energetic, disciplined, and determined to shape events rather than be shaped...
From Midnight
Class Conflict Shapes Everyday Urban Life
Class conflict is not only a matter of slogans, strikes, or political speeches; it lives inside daily routines, workplaces, homes, and desires. Midnight excels at showing that class is not an abstract category but a lived reality structuring how people work, travel, eat, fear, and hope. In the novel...
From Midnight
Economic Systems Distort Moral Judgment
People rarely become morally compromised all at once; more often, they adapt step by step to systems that reward compromise. Midnight shows how economic life can distort moral judgment by making selfishness look practical, cruelty look efficient, and opportunism look intelligent. In the novel’s comm...
From Midnight
Modern Cities Concentrate Power and Anxiety
Cities promise freedom, but they often intensify dependency. In Midnight, Shanghai is more than a backdrop; it is a living structure that concentrates wealth, information, aspiration, and conflict. The city attracts entrepreneurs, laborers, intellectuals, and opportunists because it seems to offer s...
From Midnight
Workers Are Central, Not Peripheral
A society reveals its true structure by how it treats the people whose labor it depends on. Midnight insists that workers are not background figures in the story of modern industry; they are central to it. Factories, profits, and commercial ambition all rest on labor, yet labor is often treated as a...
From Midnight
About Mao Dun
Mao Dun (1896–1981), born Shen Dehong in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, was a prominent Chinese novelist, literary critic, and cultural figure. A leading founder of Chinese realist literature, he served as chairman of the Chinese Writers Association. His major works include the Eclipse trilogy, Midnight, and ...
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Mao Dun (1896–1981), born Shen Dehong in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, was a prominent Chinese novelist, literary critic, and cultural figure. A leading founder of Chinese realist literature, he served as chairman of the Chinese Writers Association. His major works include the Eclipse trilogy, Midnight, and ...
Mao Dun (1896–1981), born Shen Dehong in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, was a prominent Chinese novelist, literary critic, and cultural figure. A leading founder of Chinese realist literature, he served as chairman of the Chinese Writers Association. His major works include the Eclipse trilogy, Midnight, and Spring Silkworms.
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Mao Dun (1896–1981), born Shen Dehong in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, was a prominent Chinese novelist, literary critic, and cultural figure. A leading founder of Chinese realist literature, he served as chairman of the Chinese Writers Association.
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