or Mao Tun orig. Shen Dehong or Shen Yanbing
born July 4, 1896, Tongxiang, Zhejiang province, China
died March 27, 1981, Beijing
Chinese literary critic, author, and editor.
A founder of the League of Left-Wing Writers (1930), he served as minister of culture after the communist government was established (194964). Many Western critics consider his trilogy of novellas Shi (1930; "Eclipse") to be his masterpiece. English translations of his works include Spring Silkworms and Other Stories (1956) and the novel Rainbow (1992). He is generally considered China's greatest novelist of realism .