{"product_id":"the-hanging-on-union-square-penguin-classics-9780143134022","title":"The Hanging on Union Square Penguin Classics","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA subversively comic, genre-bending satire of bourgeois life by an essential Chinese American voice, featuring an introduction by \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker \u003c\/i\u003ewriter Hua Hsu, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir \u003ci\u003eStay True\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Penguin Classic\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt's Depression-era New York, and Mr. Nut, an oblivious American everyman, wants to strike it rich, even if at the moment he's unemployed, with no job prospects in sight. Over the course of a single night, in a narrative that unfolds hour by hour, he meets a cast of strange characters—disgruntled workers at a Communist cafeteria, lecherous old men, sexually exploited women, pesky authors—who eventually convince him to cast off his bourgeois aspirations for upward mobility and become a radical activist. Absurdist, inventive, and suffused with revolutionary fervor, and culminating in a dramatic face-off against capitalist power in the figure of the greedy businessman Mr. System, \u003ci\u003eThe Hanging on Un\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A surreal overnight journey . . . Thirty-year-old bestseller \u003ci\u003eThe Joy Luck Club\u003c\/i\u003e perennially provides irrefutable proof Asian American stories warrant shelf space. That Penguin Classics—their venerable list considered a significant barometer of what comprises the Anglophone literary canon—has added this . . . is, undoubtedly, long-awaited, long-deserved recognition.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I finished H. T. Tsiang's masterpiece a few hours ago and I'm still not sure where I am and what day this is. My mind has been picked apart and reassembled. I need a drink.” —\u003cb\u003eGary Shteyngart, author of \u003ci\u003eSuper Sad True Love Story\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Tsiang] was radiant, boisterous, unforgettable.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A portrait of a New York City for the rich and the poor, the immigrant and the native-born, the newly homeless and the seasoned itinerant . . . Tsiang . . . tried to tell America what it really looked like. . . . [Unlike his] social-realist contemporaries—the Steinbecks and the dos Passoses— . . . Tsiang had little interest in steely, self-serious misery. In the book, as in his life, he is constantly cheeky and self-deprecating. . . . Tsiang’s manic spirit animates his voice. . . . Though the book’s formal aspects range from jarring to quaint to delightful, they all reflect the infectious freedom with which Tsiang wrote. His flinging disregard for the fashionable and the novelistic are thrilling, but so are the serious, deep convictions underlying them. For anyone with revolutionary sympathies, it’s an emotionally stirring book.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is a voice to which the white world . . . will have to listen more and more as time passes.” —\u003cb\u003eUpton Sinclair\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[\u003ci\u003eThe Hanging on Union Square\u003c\/i\u003e] felt like slipping into another person's hallucination.” —\u003cb\u003eHua Hsu, from the Introduction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] masterwork.” —\u003cb\u003eFloyd Cheung, from the Afterword\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tsiang's writings are quintessentially of the intermingled (and dangerous) public street culture of downtown Manhattan creative life. He carried the mantle, unknowingly, of Wong Chin Foo—who five decades earlier challenged Denis Kearney to a duel with Irish potatoes at Cooper Union's Great Hall. And we, the Mr. Nut faction of the Asian American movement, carry on Tsiang's spirit!” —\u003cb\u003eJohn Kuo Wei Tchen, author of \u003ci\u003eNew York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An artist of distinction, H. T. Tsiang created a genre unto itself in 1935 with \u003ci\u003eThe Hanging on Union Square\u003c\/i\u003e. Its republication after seventy-five years rescues—from an outlaw existence—a strangely and beautifully evocative satiric allegory.” —\u003cb\u003eAlan Wald, author of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eThe Hanging on Union Square\u003c\/i\u003e] is original in form without being labored; and it's remarkable for its whimsical insights into various strata of society and for its flashing counterpoint of almost savage sensuality and delicate pity. Throughout, it is alive and evocative. Mr. Tsiang's fanciful and often fantastic visions . . . convey more truth than a shelf of reportorial novels.” —\u003cb\u003eWaldo Frank\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48732526477655,"sku":"9780143134022","price":11.69,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780143134022.jpg?v=1719997274","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-hanging-on-union-square-penguin-classics-9780143134022","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}