Book excerpt: The August Sleepwalker introduces to American readers the compelling and remarkable poetry of China's foremost modern poet. Bei Dao (Zhao Zhenkai). One of the most gifted and controversial writers to emerge from the massive upheavals of contemporary China. Bei Dao both reflects and criticizes the conflicts of the Cultural Revolution of the late '60s and '70s. A youthful Red Guard whose early disillusionment with the destructiveness of the times made him an outsider. Bei Dao joined with other underground poets attempting to create an alternative literature that challenged the received orthodoxies of Maoist China. The author now lives in exile. Book jacket.