The Fall of the Pagoda () is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Eileen Chang. Originally written in English in 1963, it was published posthumously by Hong Kong University Press on 15 April 2010. Zhao Pihui translated it into Chinese. Language The novel was written originally by Eileen Chang in English rather than Chinese, although the author was Chinese. Its author Eileen Chang lived in Shanghai where she spent her childhood. So the translator translated it into Shanghai dialect which can depict their lives vividly. Before its publication, the executor of Eileen Chang's estate, Roland Soong, decided to show people The Fall of the Pagoda in bilingual, both English and Chinese. According to the voluminous correspondence between Stephen Soong and Eileen Chang, the writer planned to translate it into Chinese but she was afraid that the story about a young girl's childhood cannot stimulate the reader's appetite. So the plan was terminated. Background of the book The Fall of the Pagoda is a semi-autobiographical novel written originally by Eileen Chang in English. She finished writing the book in 1963 while she was in the United States. Eileen Chang decided to launch her American career with this book and The Book of Change but failed to find a publisher. In this book, she depicted her childhood years in Tianjin and Shanghai of the 1930s, while the Book of Change revolved around her wartime student days in Hong Kong. Plot summary The Fall of the Pagoda tells a narrative story about the childhood life of a girl, Lute, born in a noble family which is in a process of moral and financial decline. As a young girl, her mother followed her aunt to go abroad, and her father was addicted to opium, leaving her and her little brother to live with their servants, aunt Tong, aunt He, aunt Qin, etc. Her father presided over their family. But he did not work due to a negative attitude to life and the addiction to opium. Lute's mother, Lu, a woman in the vanguard of female self-reliance, decided to divorce with her father, the patriarch who was adrift in post-Qing China. Maybe due to her special family background, the little girl was different in some significant way from others of the same age. Her psychological age is much older than actual age. Lute's sickly brother, Hill, as a boy, was the important child in this family