Precarious Universality explores the diverse and complex ways that the engagement of Chinese literature with Russia in the twentieth century grappled with universality, both as a challenge to be overcome and as an aspirational ideal. Roy Chan argues that Chinese cultural interest in Russia was not solely due to political expedience but instead constituted a broader meditation on what it means to be modern. Russia became a dynamic pivot around which China might gain a sense of world historical recognition amid global capitalism, colonialism, and revolution. This allowed Chinese writers to reflect on China's worldly existence beyond the confines of any particular cultural difference, searching for a novel—if elusive—universal logic that would include both of them.

Following the protean relationship between China and Russia, Chan proposes a notion of universality born from concrete cultural engagements, relationships, and comparisons. Both China and Russia were consigned as existing "outside" world history; Precarious Universality shows how thinkers in both countries used this marginal position to imagine an even more dynamic sense of universal belonging.