Storia e memoria nel romanzo Xiguan siwang 习惯死亡 (Abituarsi a morire, 1989) di Zhang Xianliang 张贤亮 (1936-2014)

Historical wounds are a recurring theme in Chinese literature of the 20th‑century. In post-Mao China, the reconstruction of the past became one of the tasks of Chinese intellectuals. In Zhang Xianliang’s case, the experience of imprisonment was a painful journey of rethinking his identity as a man and an intellectual. In his novel Getting Used to Dying, he not only describes the recollection of his own biographical events, but also carries out a broader reflection on the value and weight of memory, as well as its reflections on the present. Literature thus becomes a tool for reflecting on the historical trauma and to try to settle the discrepancy between personal memory and official history.