Qian Zhongshu

Qian Zhongshu (钱钟书; Pinyin: Qián Zhōngshū, WG: Ch'ien Chung-shu) (1910 - December 19, 1998) was a Chinese writer and scholar, born in Wuxi （无锡）.

He was one of the most well-known Chinese authors to the Western world. Graduating from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1933, Qian continued his studies in Oxford University (Exeter College) in Britain, and later University of Paris in France. He returned to China in 1938 and became a professor at Tsinghua University.

His most famous novel, Fortress Besieged (围城), was then published in 1947. His other works include Men-Beasts-Ghosts (人兽鬼) and The Marginalia of Life (写在人生边上).

He also wrote elaborate notes on Chinese classics, showing his erudition and insight into a comparative study of different cultures. For all of this, literature was not his primary employment, he was the translator for much of Mao Zedong's collected works, which occupied most of the remainder of his active professional life. Only recently have translations of his earlier works become widely available, though Fortress Besieged was adapted into a television mini-series in China in 1990.

His magnum opus is the five volume Guanzhui Bian （管锥编）, literally the Pipe-Awl Collection, translated into English as Limited Views. Begun in the 1980s and published in its current form in the mid-1990s, this is an extensive collection of short essays on poetics, semiology, literary history and related topics written in an erudite classical style. Qian's command of the cultural traditions of Classical and Modern Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, English, German, French, Italian and Spanish allows him to construct a towering structure of polyglot and cross-cultural allusions. Qian take as the basis of this work a range of Chinese classical texts, including the ''Classic of Poetry'' (詩經 Shī Jīng), the ''Tao Te Ching'' (道德經 Dao De Jing), the Complete Prose of the Pre-Tang, and from neglected details in these works finds points of connections with works from other literatures.

His wife, Yang Jiang, is also an author, best known for her translation of Don Quixote into Chinese.