Lust,Caution is a fictional war resistance novella of 37-page.
Eileen was aware although her 1940s fiction writings were popular with Chinese readers, she was criticised by literary contemporaries like Lu Xun and Mao Dun for writing frivolous stories of love and marriage .
Their writings were on topics to stir the patriotism and spirits of the Chinese to resist the Japanese invaders.
So in the 1950s she began Lust,Caution to answer these critics.
Her struggle with the ending i.e., whether to allow the collaborator to be assassinated by patriotic student killers or to allow him to escape is a reflection of her 1944 marriage to a collaborator Hu Lan Cheng.
He was a Chinese writer and politician who served as a propaganda official in the Wang Jingwei regime, the Japanese – friendly regime during the Japanese invasion of China.
Lwh @ Macau
29 Nov 2023