Wang Lin-du (10 October 1908 – 17 December 1980), better known by his

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

Chiang Kuei, was a Chinese novelist active in Taiwan.

Life and work

Chiang Kuei was born in mainland China. As a young man, he was influenced by the May Fourth Movement (1919) and joined the Kuomintang at age 18 in Guangzhou. He married at age 29, and attended college in Beijing. In 1937 he joined the Chinese army as an officer, and served for eight years in the war against Japan in the Northern campaign ( Hebei, Henan, Anhui). His mother and adopted mother were both killed by the

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

s in 1945. He moved to Taiwan with the Kuomintang in 1948. Chiang Kuei wrote novels from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. His first and second novels are his best known works: ''The Whirlwind'' (written 1952, published 1959) and ''Rival Suns'' (1961). Both are anti-communist; the first portrays Chinese communism in a rural setting, and the second within a city (Wuhan). His third major novel was ''The Green Sea and the Blue Sky: A Nocturne'' (1964). It received little comment. A number of novels followed. Chiang Kuei lived in great poverty, and these books were mainly written for the money.

Works translated into English

References

{{Authority control Republic of China novelists 1908 births 1980 deaths Taiwanese male novelists People from Zhucheng Writers from Weifang 20th-century novelists Chinese male novelists Taiwanese people from Shandong 20th-century Chinese male writers