The shortlist has been announced for the Man Asian Literary Prize: of the twenty-three names on the long list five have been selected, including Jiang Rong (Wolf Totem) from the home team. Xu Xi (Habit of a Foreign Sky) also counts, depending on your definition of, erm, the home team. Wolf Totem, translated by Howard Goldblatt, will be published by Penguin in March, 2008. The shortlist is as follows:
- Jose Dalisay Jr., Soledad’s Sister
- Reeti Gadekar, Families at Home
- Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem
- Nu Nu Yi Inwa, Smile As They Bow
- Xu Xi, Habit of a Foreign Sky
The winner will be announced in November.
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 26, 3:47a.m.
It was originally Gordon Fairclough’s article in the online WSJ that got me thinking about road-trip literature in China, and now on top of that, wouldn’t you know, it happens to be the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s On The Road. On The Road is one of a few discrete chunks of foreign literature (others include the works of Borges and Milan Kundera) that, for various reasons of historical accident, floated across the sea and became trendy here. There are readers who wouldn’t know Hemingway’s beard if it turned up in their soup, but by god they could point out Vesuvio Cafe on a SF street map.
Fairclough’s article mentions a growing road-trip literature in China, and cites “‘Go the Distance Now,’ a book chronicling five years spent traveling around China by car.” One travelogue does not a road-trip literature make, but it started me thinking – Kerouac’s popularity must point to some kind of latent interest in this sort of thing, and really, China is the perfect country for road literature. It’s obscenely large, for one. It sports unbelievable geographical and cultural diversity (anyone who believes in the homogeneity of the Chinese, including the Chinese themselves, needs to take a road trip). It’s traditional culture encourages stasis, and trepidation about venturing away from home. The place is ripe for some maverick to demonstrate the heady joys of having the wind in your hair. Actually, a fair number of younger, middle-class adventurers are discovering that for themselves, but as far as I know they have yet to find their bible.
So what have we got? Journey to the West aside, Ma Jian’s Red Dust is probably the closest thing there is to a road-side portrait of China. But it’s an awfully political book, and I wonder how many people actually read it inside the country. Xu Xing’s You Can Have Whatever’s Left, a picaresque about a couple of rogues wandering the country, definitely qualifies. I suppose even Gao Xingjian’s Soul Mountain counts, although that struck me less as road literature and more as one man’s tiresome journey through his own angst-ridden impotence (ahem).
How about it? What am I missing?
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 7, 8:26p.m.
A few days ago the Man Asian Literary Prize (aka the Asian Booker) announced the long list for its 2007 prize. Amid a large number of Indian candidates were a few familiar names: Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, Xu Xi’s manuscript Habit of a Foreign Sky, Guo Xiaolu’s 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, and Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem. Fleeting Light by Taiwanese writer Egoyan Zheng is also up there.
Five out of twenty-three: not a terrible showing for China, though clearly we’re not cranking them out like the Indians are (apparently two-thirds of submissions came from South Asia). It’s a happy day for Howard Goldblatt as well – the English versions of Wolf Totem and Life and Death are Wearing Me Out are both his handiwork.
The three-judge panel will select a five-book short list in October, and announce the winner November 10th in Hong Kong.
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 24, 10:43p.m.
