Lust, Caution (novella)

"The Spyring" redirects here. For the general concept of a spy ring, see Espionage.
Lust, Caution
First English edition
AuthorEileen Chang
Original title色，戒
TranslatorJulia Lovell
LanguageChinese
Publication date
1979
Published in English
2007

Lust, Caution (Chinese: 色，戒; pinyin: Sè, Jiè) is a novella by the Chinese writer Eileen Chang, first published in 1979. It is set in Shanghai and Hong Kong during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Reportedly, the short story "took Chang more than two decades to complete".[1] The 2007 film of the same name by renowned Taiwanese director Ang Lee was an adaptation of this novel. The story focuses on the plight of Wang Chia-chih and her involvement in a plot to assassinate Mr. Yee, who is a co-collaborator of a Chinese collaborator with the invading Japanese force. The novella was allegedly based on a true story of the wartime spy Zheng Pingru.[2] According to David Der-wei Wang, Lust, Caution “drew controversy thanks to a biographical subtext: it seems to project Chang's own wartime experience as a collaborator's lover”.[3]

  1. ^ Wilonsky, Robert (1 October 2007). "The Spy Who Shagged Yee". City Pages. Archived from the original on 20 April 2009. Retrieved 6 December 2009. ... Writing in the afterword to a recently republished version of the 54-page story, which took Chang more than two decades to complete, ...
  2. ^ Thompson, Zoë Brigley (2016). "Beyond Symbolic Rape: The Insidious Trauma of Conquest in Marguerite Duras's The Lover and Eileen Chang's "Lust, Caution"". Feminist Formations. 28 (3): 1–26. doi:10.1353/ff.2016.0041. ISSN 2151-7371. S2CID 151579978.
  3. ^ Wang, David Der-wei (15 September 2008). "Eileen Chang and Lust, Caution". Focus Features. NBCUniversal. Retrieved 2 March 2019.