The Road Not Taken: An Interview with Xue Yiwei

Abstract

In this interview, Lin Gang and Xue Yiwei discuss the latter’s thirty years of literature more or less chronologically, beginning with his first published novella in 1988 and concluding with the publication in 2020 of “King Lear” and Nineteen-Seventy-Nine. Xue reflects on the relationship between his life and his work, his views on literature, and the difficulties he has faced in his career as a writer.