The World of a Tiny Insect
The structure, content, and imagery of The World of a Tiny Insect reveals a carefully crafted, fragmented narrative that skips in time and probes the relationships between trauma and memory, revealing both history and its psychic impact. Xiaofei Tian's annotated translation includes an introduction that situates The World of a Tiny Insect in Chinese history and literature and explores the relevance of the book to the workings of traumatic memory. Zhang Daye (b. 1854) is known only as the author of The World of a Tiny Insect. Xiaofei Tian is professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University. Among her recent publications is Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteenth-Century China."The author and narrator recounts his terrible experiences and miraculous survivals with a child's curiosity and in a vivid, straightforward way. But he also embeds what happened to him in a larger historical, philosophical, moral, and aesthetic context.