FICTION

AS LONG AS NOTHING HAPPENS, NOTHING WILL by Zhang Jie, translated by Gladys Yang, Deborah J. Leonard and Zhang Andong (Grove Weidenfeld: $17.95; 209 pp.). This biting satire of life in China following the Cultural Revolution is a collection of short stories both comic and tragic as Zhang Jie lays bare the bureaucratic paralysis, nepotism, sexual hypocrisy, backbiting and corruption of that unhappy period. “What’s Wrong With Him?” revolves around a grossly ill-equipped, understaffed hospital where patients en route to the operating room frequently die before they get there because the elevators are out of order. “Today’s Agenda” is a wickedly funny story of a bureaucracy running amok--the members of a City Committee become so entangled in their jockeying for power that decision after decision is delayed and, sure enough, as the title of this powerful collection promises, “Nothing,” does indeed, happen.