Hu Feng, the 'counterrevolutionary' leader of a banned literary school, spent twenty-five years in the Chinese Communist Party's prison system. But back in the Party's early days, he was one of its best known literary theoreticians and critics--at least until factional infighting, and his short fuse, made him persona non grata among the establishment.
His wife, Mei Zhi, shared his incarceration for many years. "F" is her account of that time, beginning ten years after her and Hu Feng's initial arrest. She herself was eventually released, after which she navigated the party's Byzantine...