Aesthetic assessments of Chang’s work have been complicated by the long-delayed publication of a late novel

Little Reunions

which has dismayed and divided her admirers in China since its Chinese publication in 2009. An English translation has now appeared. Readings of her oeuvre are divided between those who regard it as a brief

meteoric flight that ended almost as soon as it began in the 1940s

and others who see it as the broad and complex product of a long career

to which Little Reunions stands as a powerful experimental capstone. This essay will concentrate on this last novel

the reasons for its suppression and its character and qualities as a work of literature. Can Edward Said’s considerations on 'late style’ offer insights here

as some Chinese critics have suggested? How should Chang’s work be contextualized within world literature?