Wo de Jingshen Jiayuan
我的精神家园 (lit. "My Spiritual Homeland")
This book is a compilation of Wang Xiaobo's essays, selected by Wang himself, and culled from his two previous collections: 沉默的大多数 (The Silent Majority) and 思维的乐趣 (The Pleasure of Thought). The essays were written more or less between 1990 and Wang's death in '97, most published in 《读书》(Reading) and 《三连生活周刊》(Sanlian Life Weekly) back in the day. They are written in a light, direct, easy tone, which makes their dead-on insights into Chinese culture all the more freezing. There's a general consensus that Wang was a great writer, and his essays are the best thing he produced (he hated that idea), but at the same time there's also a collective resistance to the actual ideas put forth in his work – that disadvantaged groups need to be allowed to speak for themselves; that the wholesale, blatant untruths insisted upon by those in power are ridiculous, and deserve to be ridiculed. In essence, his ideas have been acknowledged to be correct, without anyone acting upon them.