The communication is dedicated to the Chinese writer Mao Dun (18961981), whose name bears, since 1981, the most important literary award in China. The study focuses on elucidating the concept of "modern literature" and the cultural movement directed against the traditional elite and its Confucian values, which have inspired a generation of young intellectuals captivated by the idea of national rebirth and social modernization by adopting Western political, scientific and cultural models. A particular analytical attention is paid to the novel "Midnight" (1933) and the writer's radical obsession with his own kind of realism.
