Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Narrative and Space: A Cartography of History -- Chapter One. Regional Romances and Family Fables: From Root Search to New Historicism -- Idiocy and Idiolect: Han Shaogong's Root Searches in Hunan -- Banditry and Bastardy: Mo Yan's Family Romances in Shandong -- Chapter Two. The Outlying and the Peripheral: Myths of Migrants and Minorities -- From Pacific Ocean to Gobi Desert: Wang Anyi's Migratory Mythology -- Muslim-Inhabited Loess: Zhang Chengzhi's "Unknown China" -- Tibetan Plateau: Historical Alternatives by Tashi Dawa, Alai, and Ge Fei -- Chapter Three. From the Country to the City: Nostalgia for the Hometown -- Maple Village and Fragrant Cedar Street: Su Tong's Southern Decadence -- Beijing Military Compound: Wang Shuo's Rootless Homesickness -- Shanghai longtang Cityscape: Wang Anyi's Descriptive Historiography -- Chapter Four. The Bodily Text and the Textual Body: The Violence of History -- Gastrotext: Food and the Body in the Fictions of Mo Yan, Su Tong, and Liu Heng -- The (Non)performance of Violence: Yu Hua's Cruel Historiography -- Typography and Topography: The Textual Body in the Works of Su Tong and Ge Fei -- Conclusion. Back(ward) to the Future: Toward a Retro-fiction -- Appendix. What Is Held and in Whose Hand? An Etymological Reexamination of shi -- Bibliography -- Index.