1960 年林海音出版小說集《城南舊事》，隨即奠定了她在台灣文壇上的基礎。本書由五個順序的故事組成，描寫一個台灣家庭於1920年代旅居北京的故事，透過主人翁小英子熱切單純的眼睛觀察她周遭的成人世界。林海音以細膩、抒情的筆觸，描寫本來天真無憂的小英子慢慢領略到人際關係和生命的無常，在迷失和困惑中，告別了童年。《城南舊事》出版後立即成為膾炙人口的作品，並在1982年由上海製片廠改編拍攝為電影。
In 1960, Lin published the collection of stories Memories of Peking: South Side Stories and established her name in Taiwan’s literary circle. Based on five sequential stories of a Taiwanese family living in Peking in the 1920s, the collection portrays the adult world through the keen eyes and innocent mind of a little girl, Ying-tzu. The sense of loss and bewilderment, which arouses the child’s awareness of the uncertainties of human relationships, even of life itself, and which finally catapults the child away from childhood joys into the sorrows of the adult world, is handled with great sensitivity and lyricism. Memories of Peking: South Side Stories became an immediate success and was eventually adapted into a movie by the Shanghai Film Studio in 1982.
