Granta magazine was established in 1889 at the University of Cambridge, named after the river that later became the River Cam.
It has a reputation for being highbrow and presciently published 12 future Booker winners and various Nobel laureates.
Chutzpah! magazine (天南) was established by art curator and poet Ou Ning (欧宁), and so far has only put out four issues. Like Granta, Chutzpah! themes their issues － they are Agrarian Asia, Universal Narratives, Mapping Poetry and Vision of Eros.
On November 20th, the editor and deputy editor of Granta John Freeman and Ellah Allfrey participated in a talk with Ou Ning at One Way Street to discuss the “life and death of literary journals.”
Here is a transcript taken from my notes － readers are welcome to listen to the video linked at the bottom.
John Freeman: Granta was established more than 100 years ago by students at Cambridge. Then American Fulbright scholars restarted it.
Magazines are like blank canvases; without it artists can’t do anything.
Giving writers a space depends on who is available at the time and our ability to find them. Granta’s mission is to find the right writers. We’ve published Czech, Latin American and French writers amongst others, including Kundera, Llosa, Márquez.
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By Alice Xin Liu, November 25, 12:02a.m.
Busy days for the Peony Literary Agency, who recently announced the sales of three books from two of their authors: Han Han's Youth and 1988: I Want to Talk to This World have both been bought by Simon & Schuster US, to be translated by Allan Barr and published in the second half of 2012; and Yan Geling's The Flowers of War (金陵十三钗), to Other Press, translated by Nicky Harman, to be published next January.
Congratulations!
For further information please contact Marysia Juszczakiewicz in Hong
Kong at marysia@peonyliteraryagency.com, or Tina Chou in Shanghai at
tina@peonyliteraryagency.com. Full press releases below:
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By Eric Abrahamsen, November 24, 11:20p.m.
Seems like all the literary events I've been to recently have been about A Yi's new book, Guaren (寡 人, literally "the lonely one", a term the Emperor used to refer to himself). The book is hard to categorize: taken largely from a blog he once kept on the cutting-edge "Bullogger" blogging platform, it consists of short chunks – anywhere from a sentence to ten pages – of writing, some chunks obviously fictional, some more journal-like. Among them are early forms of some of his stories – "The Bird Saw Me" and Cat and Mouse (which is appearing in Today magazine next month, under a new title, I forget which) – as well as, one assumes, some ideas that never made it into fiction at all. One of these, titled "Warmth", I've translated below. Enjoy!
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By Eric Abrahamsen, September 20, 3:43a.m.
Documentary filmmaker and long-time Japan resident Li Ying (李缨) has recently published a Chinese-language book 《神魂颠倒日本国》about his documentary film Yasukuni. The product of nearly a decade of researching, filming and editing, Yasukuni has stirred controversy in both China and Japan, been banned in mainland China, and been the subject of a lawsuit in the Japanese courts.
From 14:00-15:30 on Sunday, July 10, 2011, Li Ying will hold a book release event and signing at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in 798 Art District, Beijing. The event is free, open to the public, and will be held in Chinese.
读书系列：《神魂颠倒日本国》- 靖国骚动的浪尖与暗流
7月10日（周日）
14:00-15:30
UCCA报告厅
July 10 (Sun)
14:00-15:30
UCCA Auditorium
嘉宾 ：李缨
Guest: Li Ying
By Cindy M. Carter, July 7, 11:35a.m.
Whilst I was looking the other direction, Cindy Carter's translation of Yan Lianke's novel Dream of Ding Village was published by Grove Press in the US and Constable and Robinson in the UK. Take a look at this book (there's a Kindle edition!), it's a good one, by one of China's best contemporary authors. And an excellent translation!
Congratulations Cindy!
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 14, 1:06p.m.
Here's the latest update on the symposium about Zhang Dachun's new book Chengbang Baolituan at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in 798 Art District, Beijing:
1月7日 (周五), 10:15-12:15, UCCA报告厅
January 7 (FRI), 10:15-12:15, UCCA Auditorium
【文化项目 Culture Program】
UCCA新书发布系列8： 张大春新书《城邦暴力团》首发暨作品研讨会
UCCA Book Release Series 8: Chengbang Baolituan by Zhang Dachun
Address: UCCA, 798 Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100015
Tel: +86 10 8459 9269 / 8459 9387
嘉宾 Guests: 张大春：作家，《城邦暴力团》作者 / Zhang Dachun (novelist) ; 黄集伟：专栏作家、出版人、书评家、作家、语词收藏人 Huang Jiwei (author, publisher, reviewer, columnist)
李敬泽：文学评论家，《人民文学》主编 Li Jingze (literary critic, editor-in-chief of Renmin Wenxue [People’s Literature]) , 止庵：学者，文学评论家 Zhi An (scholar, literary critic)
合作方 Partner: 世纪文景 Wenjing (Horizon Media)
语言 Language: 中文 In Chinese only
票务 Ticketing
活动免费，UCCA会员可预留座位，请于1月6日前发送电子邮件(注明会员编号)至frontdesk@ucca.org.cn
非UCCA会员请预约参加，将姓名、电话发送到frontdesk@ucca.org.cn。邮件标题：预约参加张大春新书《城邦暴力团》首发研讨会；我们会于1月6日前发送邮件确认。
This event is free, but requires a reservation.
UCCA members: To make reservations for this event, please send an e-mail with your membership number to frontdesk@ucca.org.cn by Jan 6.
Non-UCCA members: Please send an e-mail with your name and phone number to frontdesk@ucca.org.cn. You will receive a confirmation e-mail by Jan 6.
By Cindy M. Carter, January 4, 12:47a.m.
Western critics have expected Chinese authors to unambiguously answer political questions, to stake out their positions, to be in opposition to Mainland China's prevailing social order. Chinese books are mostly translated into English and published by university and academic presses to support Western ideological claims, and everybody stopped reading them a long time ago.
So, if I had to jot a list of reasons that Jia Pingwa has never really been translated into English in a major way... somewhere on that list, I'd note a cultural conservatism that doesn't appeal to Western readers of Chinese fiction, and I'd also list a general ideological subtlety. When Jia Pingwa's Turbulence dropped, it was met with kindhearted confusion, and reviews of it still resorted to calling it a critique of "the bureaucracy that hamstrings modern China." They had nothing else to say. Okay. What if Jia wrote a novel set during the Cultural Revolution?
Just like you've always wanted to hear Rod Stewart rip into "My Funny Valentine," there are those that are stoked to have, say, Mo Yan tear into the central government's family planning policy or have Jia Pingwa really get into the Cultural Revolution.
Jia's early writing, which is not very highly regarded (even by Sun Jianxi, really), is often set casually during the Cultural Revolution ("casually" because it's not the Cultural Revolution of Scar Literature or Western imagination). He has never really laid into the subject, as, I guess, he's been expected to. But... he has now.
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By Dylan Levi King, October 26, 11:52p.m.
Internet writing comes in for its fair share of abuse-- check Jia Pingwa in a recent China Daily profile, joking that he doesn't have to stoop to writing about tomb raiders or eulogizing entrepreneurs... or Tibetan mastiffs, I guess... or alienated, aging 80hou kids....
Damn, people are reading it, though.
Even before Yuan Lei (also known as Yuan Ping) got picked up by the Dongguan PD "on suspicion of disseminating pornography," his novel, In Dongguan, posted on Tianya had two million views.
Is there anything beyond the easy story, about (very poorly executed) censorship, which has been picked up by the usual gang of Western China watchers? Anything?
Yes.
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By Dylan Levi King, October 10, 4:25a.m.
Submissions for the 2010 Man Asian Literary prize will be accepted up until the end of the month! Remember, submissions must be of published English-language translations of books by Asian citizens, and must be submitted by publishers. If you're a translator (or Asian-citizen-author) with a novel you're proud of, bug your publisher now!
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 24, 8:07p.m.
A little Monday-morning horn-tootling: Our very own Nicky Harman has been chosen to translate Jin Shan, aka Gold Mountain Blues, by Zhang Ling.
Nicky's situation is a little unusual in that her translation is being commissioned and published by multiple publishing houses in various regions simultaneously, rather than the usual practice of a single commissioning publisher who then sells the rights on. Hopefully this will result in slightly better terms for Nicky.
Gold Mountain Blues will come out with Atlantic in the UK/Commonwealth and Penguin in Canada, and is scheduled to appear in late 2011/early 2012. It has also sold into eight other languages/territories.
Congratulations, Nicky, and we look forward to reading it!
By Eric Abrahamsen, June 1, 12:19a.m.
On the New Yorker blog Evan Osnos wrote a few days ago about how the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a website dedicated to tracking censorship and its deleterious effects, had been represented in the Chinese media as a pro censorship body, effectively reversing the truth in order to give Chinese viewers the impression that Chinese-style censorship is common all over the world. Osnos' question was: "I wonder what this says about the decision-making apparatus. Do some of China’s top technology-policy planners really misunderstand the state of play in the West?"
He invited responses, so this is mine: I think there's no question that this was done deliberately, as a part of a larger campaign to lightly confuse the Chinese people as to just how unnatural their government appears to most non-Chinese observers. Both the government and its people are deeply concerned that China should appear to be a "normal" country (never mind that it be a normal country) and much manipulation of public opinion goes into supporting this illusion. The only thing a little surprising about this case is how baldly the facts were reversed.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, April 5, 7:30a.m.
That's the question in a piece by Wang Yan, for the Liaoning Daily. The article is from a seven part series called, "Re-evaluating Chinese literature."
It features the thoughts of a gang of Chinese scholars, whose opinions range from reasonable to... let's say, unreasonable:
In this installment, "re-evaluating" will take on a slightly different meaning, as we evaluate the position of Chinese literature in a more global sense. We will re-evaluate the status of Chinese literature, from the point of view of cultural exchange and translation of Chinese books. No matter what is achieved in our contemporary literature, the question remains of its standing on the world stage.
Translating books and promoting them overseas is our literary bridge to the West. Currently, that bridge might be said to resemble a plank of wood spanning a wide river. This single narrow and flimsy link to the West is no longer sufficient.
Western translators and scholars of Chinese culture are known as Sinologists. They have been studying China for centuries, but there are very few scholars focusing on contemporary literature. Chinese scholarship on Western literature has a history of at least a hundred years, but Western scholarship on Chinese literature is a field with history of only two or three decades. The West and China do not have an equal understanding of each other. Many Chinese authors are simply ignored by Western scholars. There is a general ignorance of Chinese literature in the West, yet Chinese writers still take to heart everytime China is overlooked for the Nobel Prize for Literature. The West ignores Chinese literature but we still hang on every word that Wolfgang Kubin says. Every Chinese writer still wants to become an international writer. Taking all of that into account, let's rethink our answer to the question of how far Chinese literature has progressed down the road to global acceptance.
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By Dylan Levi King, March 27, 8:09a.m.
Bruce Humes presents a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of Zhang Chengzhi's 鲜花的废墟 (En las Ruinas de la Flor: Viajes por al-Andalus).
"Zhang Chengzhi (张承志), the white-hot Red Guard who mastered Mongolian and Japanese—and then converted to Islam—has just launched En las Ruinas de la Flor: Viajes por al-Andalus (鲜花的废墟). His new Chinese-language travelogue takes us through Moorish Spain, Portugal and Morocco in search of the golden age of Islam in Europe (8th-15th centuries)."
By Cindy M. Carter, February 19, 8:33a.m.
The winner of the 2009 Dangdai Literary Prize was announced a couple of weeks ago (sorry, we've been eating dumplings in the northeast).
The shortlist included:
A Word is Worth a Thousand Words took the prize; Liu Zhenyun was also the winner of the 2007 prize with My Name is Liu Yuejin.
Previously…
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 18, 8:20p.m.
So obviously, between Google agreeing to settle with Chinese writers on the book scanning issue, and Google announcing that it will no longer censor its google.cn search results, these are big days for Google and China.
There's been some press about the Google books issue inside of China, though as you might imagine it is carefully-edited, carefully-angled press, aimed at obscuring the censorship issue while making Google out to be a copyright-stealing, China-bullying corporate pirate. This widely-reposted article, in Chinese, represents the main thrust of reporting in China. In the interest of expediency and irony, we've run that article through the Google translator (editing only the title for clarity), and now leave you to puzzle through the (surprisingly comprehensible) results:
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By Eric Abrahamsen, January 12, 11:59p.m.
The following is a translation of "thing number one" from Han Han's latest blog post, "Three Things". He's talking about the continued non-appearance of his much-ballyhoo'd new literary magazine, called <独唱团> (temporary translation: Band of Soloists, any better suggestions?).
I attended two press conferences in Beijing, not for any promotional purposes – I don't like doing promotion even for books that earn me money directly, and I rarely meet with media or readers face to face. The purpose of these conferences was to lower everyone's expectations for Band of Soloists. I had originally meant this magazine to be a freer, wilder sort of literary magazine, but unfortunately, given present publishing restrictions, it's going to be difficult to realize that plan, and I'm also not willing to compromise to the point where the magazine is no better than traditional literary magazines. The magazine has yet to go to print, and the first issue is far from having a publication date. Actually the contents of the first issue were ready months ago; even the second issue is mostly complete, but various stumbling blocks have kept us from printing. I'm feeling pretty helpless; I'll try harder to work with my partners. Please understand that I personally have no desire for delays, I only meant to improve the lives of writers in China, and if the delays continue they could hold up my own finances too, I might not even get a new set of clothing for New Years. So I'm not delaying on purpose, I'm just trying to get a freer creative space for the writers who believe in me. Maybe my own strength and abilities are limited – I hope readers will forgive me, and forgive my incompetence. And please, everyone, lower your expectations for this literary magazine. Even if and when it finally goes to print, the first few issues will likely be terrible. I will do everything I can to guarantee a basic level of quality, but please don't hold out too much hope for it. Let me say to you once again, the flight will continue to be delayed, not because of technical errors with the plane, but because of inclement weather conditions.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 11, 2:50a.m.
The Foreign Correspondent's Club of China held an event last Friday that was a sort of retrospective on the Frankfurt Book Fair – lessons learned, insights gained, etc. (details here) The four speakers were Michael Kahn-Ackermann, head of the Goethe-Institute in Beijing; Jo Lusby, General Manager (China) of the Penguin Group; Zhou Wenhan, a freelance writer based in Beijing; and Kristin Kupfer, a German freelance journalist.
The discussion, held in the Sequoia Cafe, was good – highlights (from my point of view) included Michael Kahn-Ackermann's point about the enormous disconnect between the official delegation and the Chinese writers who attended. Essentially that the two groups had entirely separate goals, different methods of presenting themselves, and different styles of communication. Jo Lusby continued this with comments that the government would have to learn how to balance its control over "the message" with allowing those people who actually create culture to do their work. There was also a lively debate/argument over the responsibilities of the western press, with one excitable audience member (a journalist) saying, "When we ask Mo Yan if he's a dissident writer he has to answer!"
Zhou Wenhan, the freelance journalist, wrote his remarks out in Chinese, which were then ably translated and read by Jonathan Rechtman. I was impressed with how succinctly and forcefully he presented some very important ideas about how the Chinese government works, and so rather than regale you with half-remembered anecdotes I will paste below, with permission of both author and translator, the English version of what he said:
Kristin has asked me to talk about the strategic issues surrounding the communication between the German and Chinese organizers in a broader sense, but I'm not part of any government think tank or anything, so I can't really say much about the strategic side of things. I can only speak about some of my observations as to how the Chinese government seeks to manage information in all of its interactions with other countries, whether in terms of cultural exchanges, international conferences, or the Olympics.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, December 7, 10:19p.m.
Maybe it's a meaningless list based on dubious statistics, but it's still fun. There are the usual popular authors, with a strong showing from writers of children's books and young adult literature. Nice to see some very worthy and serious authors on the list this year: Wang Meng, Yan Lianke and Alai, among others. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, 让部分作家先富起来 ("Let some of the writers become wealthy first.")
The highest-paid authors in China, 2009 edition
By Cindy M. Carter, December 1, 8:43a.m.
News broke today that Su Tong's novel The Boat to Redemption was chosen by the Man Asia Literary Prize judges as this year's winner. Su Tong was the only Chinese writer on the long list. The book is to be translated by Howard Goldblatt and published in the UK next February by Transworld UK.
Here's an article from the Guardian with more detail. The following is from the press release from the Peony Literary Agency (née Creative Work) which represents Su Tong.
On Nov 16, 2009, the Man Asian Literary Prize announced in Hong Kong the recipient of
the prize. Open to all Asian novels unpublished in English, the prize aims to bring
exciting new Asian authors to the attention of the world literary community.
Su Tong's prolific and provocative oeuvre – six novels including Rice (2004) and My Life as Emperor (2006), a dozen novellas, more than 120 short stories – have earned him a
place at the centre of China's literary scene. His best known work abroad is the novella
Wives and Concubines, which was made into the film Raise the Red Lantern directed by
Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li. The film garnered an Oscar (1991), and won a Bafta
in 1993. Su Tong's Binu – The Myth Of Meng Jiang Nu (2006), the tale of the girl whose
tears collapsed the Great Wall, sold more than 100,000 copies in China within a month of
publication. It has since been sold into 15 countries.
Boat to Redemption which won the award is a raw, charged and unerringly human
comedy of the revolution. It is the story of disgraced Secretary Ku who has been banished
from the Party and leaves the shore for a new life among the boat people on a fleet of
industrial barges. Refusing to renounce his high status, he maintains a distance – with
Dongliang, his teenage son, from the lowlifes who surround him and he takes on Life,
Fate and the Party in the only way he knows…
For further information, please contact Marysia Juszczakiewicz (in Hong Kong) or Tina
Chou (in Beijing) at:
Email: marysia@peonyliteraryagency.com
Tel: (852) 2167 8887
Fax: (852) 2167 8885
Email: tina@peonyliteraryagency.com
Mobile: 137-1866-7210
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 17, 10:48a.m.
Julia Lovell very kindly consented to give us the following interview, on the occasion of the Penguin Classics' publication of her translation of the complete fiction of Lu Xun.
Edit: Great minds think alike, or at least ask their questions of the same folk – Danwei has also posted an interview with Julia.
Lu Xun occupies a transitionary literary period between the classical writing of imperial China and what we consider modern Chinese today. How did you go about choosing an appropriate voice and register in English? What were some of the resources you turned to?
I suppose that when I started I was trying to recreate Lu Xun's own frame of reference. As is well known, he was a voracious reader of foreign literature. He once advised young writers to "read no Chinese books. Or as few as you can. But read more foreign books"; he even advocated something called "hard translation" that imported foreign syntax into the Chinese language through translation. So I thought that an obvious place to start might be some of the (particularly Eastern European) writers that he was keen on, and whose impact on his writing some scholars have studied: Gogol's "Diary of a Madman", for example. My own academic background is also very much in May-Fourth period writing - so I found it helpful to draw on knowledge of that era and of its ideas about the literature it was trying to create. A big part of the May Fourth vision of a new, modern literature was that it should intervene in life, that it should have an edge of political urgency to it - and that's strongly there in a lot of Lu Xun's fiction and essays.
But finally, and at the risk of sounding lazy, I think that Lu Xun does a lot of a translator's work for him/her. There's a tightly controlled fury bound up in his best, most powerful stories (I'm thinking particularly of pieces such as "Medicine", "Tomorrow", "Kong Yiji") that simply asks to be recreated in the target language. (Though I'm not saying I've succeeded at that.)
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By Eric Abrahamsen, November 10, 11a.m.
The Guardian reports that Jean-Jacques Annaud will be directing the film adaptation of the novel Wolf Totem by author Lu Jiamin - better known by his pen name of Jiang Rong. (See full article).
A quote from the Guardian piece:
The Associated Press reported that Annaud would be forced to make an apolitical interpretation of the novel in order to pass Chinese film censorship, with the Beijing Forbidden City Film Company's statement about the project avoiding the book's political messages to describe it as "an environmental protection-themed novel about the relationship between man and nature, man and animal".
This sounds like the real deal, but it does bring back some memories: anyone recall a few years back, when rumours of a Peter Jackson/Weta adaptation of Wolf Totem were flying fast and furious? One imagines that the Jackson version would have been heavy on computer graphics and special effects, while Annaud plans to spend 18 months raising and training the wolves himself.
I'm curious about the screenplay adaptation. Will it be based on the French translation of the novel (Le Totem du loup, by translators Yan Hansheng and Lisa Carducci), or the English translation by Howard Goldblatt, or will they start from scratch and work up a screenplay based on the Chinese novel? Will the film itself have Mongolian dialogue, or Chinese, or both? Not English or French, certainly.
I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this in the months to come...
By Cindy M. Carter, August 22, 7:09a.m.
Yesterday's big news was the announcement of the republication of Ruined Capital by Jia Pingwa, one of the major novelistic works of the past few decades, and a perpetual lightning rod for controversy and criticism. The Writers Publishing House is doing the honors.
The book has for some years been under something like a soft ban: no new editions have come out for a while, and it was getting harder and harder to find a non-pirated version of the book. The 'controversy', based almost solely on the fact that there's sex in the book, was pretty silly from the beginning: it was an awfully prurient read when it came out in 1993, but the constitution of the modern Chinese reading public is highly fortified compared to what it used to be, and it's hard to imagine anyone really raising an eyebrow at the steamy scenes today.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, July 30, 2:33a.m.
As a bit of a contrast to the last post about Yu Hua's Brothers and how it's reviewed, here's a translation of the eponymous headline review from Pulling Yu Hua's Teeth, a collection of hatchet-jobs on Brothers that was published in China in 2006. It's neither the worst nor the best example of Yu Hua-related criticism, but it was one of the more prominent.
Pulling Yu Hua's Teeth
by Cang Lang
Two recent events have shaken up China's literary world. The first occurred when a certain famous literary critic [白烨 Bai Ye] criticized 'Post-80s' writers, offending 'race-car driver' Han Han and his friends and drawing such heavy fire that he was forced to close his blog. The second was the publication of the second volume of Brothers by the renowned writer Yu Hua, and its prodigious sales around the country.
The spring weather may be chilly this year, but things are already lively in China's book circles – all those literary folks had hibernated long enough. The only real shame was that the two so-called 'events' were so lacking in literary value – particularly the former, in which the 'race-car driver' came off as particularly vulgar and shameless, and entirely lacking in cultivation. But it was hardly worth getting upset about; some of our famous critics really do have issues, and it was only a matter of time before Han Han was rude about it: the old man should have seen it coming. But when it came to Brothers, by the famous writer Yu Hua, the world of literary criticism responded with a coordinated attack that was gratifying to see. Even diehard apologists like Xie Youshun, Zhang Yiwu and Chen Xiaoming finally listened to their consciences and began to actually criticize. Assaulted from all sides, Yu Hua made a show of turning up his nose in contempt, but he's also a 'writer' of some refinement and he wasn't going to lose his cool. He showed far better quality than Han Han, which was a bit of an eye-opener.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, March 29, 12:24a.m.
The second annual Sino-English Literary Translation training course ended last Friday night, the conclusion of a week of workshops and seminars so tightly-packed that those of us present hardly had time to post. I hope other participants might chime in here with their thoughts, but I wanted to make a brief report.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, March 24, 11:19a.m.
As we've mentioned before, Paper Republic received an Arts Council, England, grant in 2008 to enable us to develop the website and promote Chinese literature in translation. As part of this work, we'll be visiting the UK next month for the London Book Fair, taking a Chinese author, Han Dong, and organising a variety of literary events in April. Anyone who can come is most welcome. We will be blogging the visit, so keep an eye on the website. Also, we’ll film or transcribe major discussions and upload them.
Here is our provisional timetable - please check the Paper Republic website before turning up at any of these events, in case there have been last-minute changes.
-
Sunday 19 April 2009 – London: International PEN literary festival, Free the Word
Han Dong will read some of his work at the Literary Lunch.
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Monday-Wednesday 20-22 April 2009 – London: London Book Fair
Eric Abrahamsen and Nicky Harman will be at the London Book Fair, participating in seminars and meeting publishers with an interest in publishing translated Chinese literature.
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Thursday 23 April 2009 – London: East meets West: Authors Talking to Authors, featuring Han Dong, Xinran, Aamer Hussein, Kate Pullinger, and Richard Lea of the Guardian newspaper.
Venue: Oxfam shop, 91 Marylebone High St, London, W1U 4RB. Tel:
020 74873570. Please call in advance to book a place. 7pm.
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Friday 24 April 2009 – London: Book launch of Banished! Nicky Harman’s translation of Han Dong’s novel, at Probsthains Bookshop, 41 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3PE.
Tel: 020 7636 1096 Time: 6-8pm. RSVP to Nicky Harman n.harmanic@gmail.com OR Michael Sheringham (msheringham@hotmail.com).
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Tuesday 28 April, Edinburgh, Scotland: New Words, New Roads: Chinese literature in the world - a lecture by the poet and novelist Han Dong, followed by a panel discussion with translators of contemporary Chinese work. Presented by The Scottish Centre for Chinese Studies and LLC Graduate School: Translation Studies. Venue: Lecture Theatre, Hugh Robson Building. Time: 5.15 - 6.30pm.
By Nicky Harman, March 23, 8:31p.m.
An excellent podcast features Bill Marx of Public Radio International/PRI World Books interviewing John Donatich, director of Yale University Press. Topics include the Margellos World Republic of Letters, a newly-endowed fund to support the translation of foreign literature into English (C-E translators, take note!), the dearth of book coverage in mainstream western media and the role of university presses in publishing and promoting translated literature.
By Cindy M. Carter, February 27, 10:02a.m.
This morning was the press conference for the Dangdai literary magazine's fifth annual best novel award. Dangdai, which is run by the People's Literature Publishing House, is trying to turn this prize into a bit of a challenge to the hegemony of the bigger prizes administered by the Writers Association: the editor of Dangdai, Yang Xinlan, specifically touted this prize as the non-governmental answer to the Mao Dun prize.
Every literary prize and its brother is touting "transparency" and "fairness" these days, but the Dangdai prize might get a little closer to that goal than most: there is no cash for the winner, reducing some of the incentive for backdoor dealing, and to hear Yang talk, the judges were left unmolested during the nomination process. She even described them as being slightly taken aback when the magazine had no "directives" or even gentle hints as to which direction they should cast their votes — if this is true, it speaks as well for the Dangdai prize as it does poorly for the other prizes.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, December 24, 2:28a.m.
The newest edition of the Frankfurt Book Fair newsletter is out (via Three Percent), and includes an interview with Jing Bartz, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair's Beijing Book Information Centre. The most eye-catching of the topics discussed was this:
The minister from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) approved the first list of translation funding shortly before the Frankfurt Book Fair. The amounts range from 2,000 to 7,000 euros per title.
Before anyone gets excited, the deadline for applying for GAPP funding was November 15, and funds were only applicable to books going into German. The interview touches on several other topics of interest (including the privatization of China's publishing houses) so do take a look…
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 27, 10:12a.m.
The Olympics Games and multiple national disasters aside, 2008 is an historic year for another reason: it marks the 30th anniversary of the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's 'reform and opening up' (改革开放) economic recovery plan. Inevitably, this year has seen a pile of retrospectives and "where-are-we-now" type articles and TV programs, most illustrating just how far China has come in 30 years, while simultaneously reviving rhetoric and imagery from a more Socialist past.
The publishing world is no exception: this article (Chinese only) is an announcement of the impending publication of a series of the 300 "most influential books" of the past 30 years. Here's the second paragraph of the report:
According to the introduction provided by Nie Zhenning [聂震宁], president of the China Publishing Group [中国出版集团], the group has planned out 115 major themes and 16 major activities having to do with the 30 years of reform and opening up [henceforth "30RO"], and the publication and promotion of the "300 Most Influential Books of the 30RO" series, led by the China Book Business Report is one of the most important of those activities. "These 300 books provide a broad, deep, and true record of the magnificent surge of history over the 30RO. They are an earnest summary of the practical experience of 30RO. They explore 30 years of Sino-Marxist historical progress and fully reflect the deep changes that Chinese society and the Chinese people have gone through over the past 30 years under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. They proclaim the achievements of 30RO and the contributions which China has made to the development and progress of human society, thereby providing readers with rich resources regarding the history of the 30RO, and adding one more priceless jewel to the cultural treasure-stores of the Chinese nationality," said Nie Zhenning.
Update: The greater list is now online and you, citizen of the interwebs, have the chance to vote for your favorite authors! The 30-year criteria turns out to have meant, 'published within the past 30 years', which includes recent reprints of old books, which makes the criteria mostly meaningless. You can vote for as many books as you like, as many times as you like (we've voted four times so far), so get clicking! It's digital democracy; it only works if you believe!
The books will first be nominated by a committee of experts and the list will be publicized in the media. Readers will have a chance to vote on them, and then the experts will settle on the final 300. No mention is made of genre or type of book, but the books will: "provide healthy guidance to thought and morality, have positive, uplifting content, be conducive to the creation and promotion of advanced culture" etc etc etc.
On the one hand it's unfair to single this article out, as this kind of language is entirely obligatory and in some sense can be simply ignored. On the other hand, major publishing resources and publicity are being put into this series, resources that could have been spent elsewhere. And people wonder why Chinese literature can't quite pull itself together…
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 3, 4:38a.m.
The Xinhua News Agency, as it is wont to do, brings us fresh cause to despair: the hot new literay trend is here, and it is 'writing groups' or 'bands' (写作组合), cabals of scribblers analogous to the boy-bands or girl-bands that dominate the pop music world. These writing groups are mostly in the under-twenty age-range, mostly writing in imitation of 'older' celebrity writers like Han Han. Apparently it all started in 2006, when Li Ze (李锋) at the World Knowledge Press (世界知识出版社) published Water Town (水城), a novel by a pair of girls then aged 18 and 19, who called themselves Jumping Orange Writing. They were followed by the three members of Girls' Studio (女生作坊) (the youngest of whom is 16), Lollipop (棒棒糖) (middle school students), and Unknown Quantity (未知数) (elementary school students). As the article cheerfully notes, many of these groups only ever publish one book, or break up without having published anything at all.
Is this curtains for serious Chinese literature? I've done plenty of hand-wringing myself in the past few years, but at a certain point, when pop culture has got its claws deep enough into literature, it seems likely that literature will pull a Trojan Horse, and start to transform pop culture from the inside out. Among all these scribbling teens there must be a few who, fifteen years from now, at the age of 29 or 30, will start to feel the itch of dissatisfaction and wonder if they shouldn't be trying for something a little deeper. From the melodramatic, sentimental mush that's being produced today, it's only a few short steps to a Chinese Dickens, and once you've got a Chinese Dickens, well… there's nowhere you can't go.
Wishful thinking, perhaps, but if these trends keep up I'm going to renounce all snooty puritanism, and whole-heartedly embrace this new era of sloppy literary love. Not actually read the books, mind you, just 'embrace the era'.
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 2, 5:28a.m.
China will be the guest of honor at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair next year, and preparations are already underway. The following conversation serves as a foreword to the informational packet being produced by the German Book Information Centre here in Beijing, which also includes a sampling of Chinese writers and works that will be featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, September 26, 3:34a.m.
In the run-up to the Olympics, PEN is holding an event centered around China's imprisoned or threatened writers and journalists. This will take place in New York on August 7, at The New School's Tishman Auditorium. From the press release:
On August 7, the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, PEN American Center will honor the more than 40 writers and journalists currently being held in Chinese prisons for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Acclaimed American writers will come together on stage at this special event to break the silence—or what has been called the Great Firewall—that threatens the work and lives of Chinese writers.
Edward Albee, Russell Banks, Philip Gourevitch, Jessica Hagedorn, Hari Kunzru, Rick Moody, Martha Southgate, Francine Prose, and others will read new and previously untranslated statements and writings by several of the jailed writers and other dissidents and members of the Independent Chinese PEN Center.
On the off chance that anyone's there and attending, send a report or a photo, will you?
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 1, 1:15a.m.
Claire Li's post on the Make Do Studios website analyzes some of the reasons Bertelsmann AG's business model failed in China:
"Why did Bertelsmann's China business fail? Some people say it has to do with the prevalence of pirated books here. But obviously, people who hold this view have not caught on to the state of the book market in China nowadays [...]
"Bertelsmann continued opening bookstores around the country without realizing how greatly the internet would influence people's shopping habits. People buy books on Dangdang and Joyo for its wide selection, low discounts, fast delivery, its payment-upon-receipt system, and freedom from any membership requirements like having to buy a book each month. Bertelsmann, by contrast, not only had a limited choice of books and poorer discounts, but it added another requirement last year that its platinum members had to spend RMB 299 per year or else be bumped down to a lower level. An understandable amendment, since the book club's overhead is high, but nobody wants to be forced to spend money."
read the complete article
Update: Another take on Bertelsmann's China venture (from Chen Gang, a journalist at China Publishing Today)
By Cindy M. Carter, July 28, 8:51p.m.
A week or so ago I attended the press conference for The Next (文学之新), a new literary competition designed to sniff out the newest in Chinese literary talent. Most of you may know this already, but Chinese writers are generally referred to by the decade of their birth. So-and-so is a 70s writer, or an 80s writer, etc. Whether there’s any real utility to this kind of classification I don’t know – I suppose it’s possible that China’s recent history has changed so dramatically, so swiftly, that any given ten-year cohort might actually have something in common.
The 80s writers were the last hit sensation, but the sad truth is that Father Time spares no one and they’re starting to show their age – graduating from college, developing taste in music, having sexual experiences, etc. The Next is the mutual brainchild of the Yangtze River Art and Literature Publishing House, Top Novel magazine, Penguin, Sina.com and the Qidian literature website, and the goal is a return to the purity of the under-25 set. The competition is accepting submissions from now until the end of September, following which comes several rounds of elimination: from 36 contestants to be announced in December, to a grand champion by next July. Each month in between will see another, smaller group of contestants announced in that month’s issue of Top Novel.
This competition is interesting both for the muscle behind it – major foreign and domestic publishing houses, as well as two of China’s largest internet portals – and for the judging panel. Top Novel magazine is an element of the Guo Jingming franchise, and Guo Jingming is the major star power behind this project. Guo, of course, is a definitive 80s writer – possibly the most famous of them, certainly one of the richest, without a doubt the most glittery. He’s on the judging panel, but right there with him is one of China’s hoariest authorities, Wang Meng. Wang Meng is a government writer of the old school: genuinely talented, a smart guy, but also a past master of toeing the line. The rest of the panel includes Zhang Kangkang, Wang Haipeng and Hai Yan – they’re aiming for a mix of market appeal and literary cred.
The press conference was a standard affair – emphasis on the fairness and openness of the competition, and major stress on picking works that are ‘positive’ (积极的) and ‘sunny’ (阳光的). Take heed, ye adolescents! If life sucks and you hate everybody, keep it to yourself! I’ll save the odiousness of ‘sunny’ as a mind-control adjective for another day. My favorite quote came from Guo Jingming, describing his reaction to the submissions so far: “Now I know how my esteemed colleagues on this panel must have felt when they read my writing for the first time. I just don’t understand it.”
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 11, 7:11p.m.
Lu Jinbo (路金波) is one of the major publishers associated with internet literature and the new generation of youth writing. He began his career as a writer, under the pen-name Li Xunhuan (李寻欢), and along with Annie Baby (安妮宝贝) and Ning Caishen (宁财神) was one of the "three chariots" (三辆马车) of Rongshuxia.
By 2002 he began thinking of leaving writing behind, and moved to the Rongshu Culture Company, which became a part of Bertelsmann in that year. Since then he has become something of a minor celebrity in the publishing world, publishing the flashiest writes, giving the biggest advances, and generally breaking all the rules. The biggest names on his list are Wang Shuo, Han Han, Guo Jingming and Annie Baby, though he has a hand in plenty of other profitable publishing ventures. For further background, see Danwei's translation of an interview with him.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, February 23, 3:50p.m.
An unfortunate bit of news: we've been asked by the State University of New York press to take down our samples of Wang Xiaobo's Golden Age, since the samples apparently conflict with the English-language translation rights they hold for Wang in Love and Bondage. Frankly, I'm not in the least convinced that this is legally viable, but I'm also very unwilling to get into a fight about it. The prospect of a practically penniless university press suing a group of actually penniless translators over stories few are ever likely to read is too depressing to bear consideration, so down they come. We're leaving the stubs up; if you want to read the longer samples email us.
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 15, 5:19p.m.
The first internet literature piece is an interview with Shen Haobo (Shěn Hàobō, 沈浩波), who has dual identities as an avant-garde poet and the head of a publishing company. Most of his poetry can be found online via the venerable Shijianghu website, and his company is Xiron (dǎtiě wénhuà, 打铁文化), which specializes in publishing internet literature. The following is based on a conversation that took place November 12.
The Secret Life of Publisher Shen
Shen Haobo has been working in the publishing industry since graduating from college, though he did not start his own company until 2001. Xiron is one of the businesses that operate in the wide gray band at the edge of the formal publishing industry, by buying publishing numbers (kānhào, 刊号) from publishing houses and putting out their own books. Xiron came to prominence by publishing (zhūxiān, 诛仙), a martial arts fantasy which first appeared online, and has since put out several other major hits, including That Ming Dynasty Stuff (míngcháo nàxiē shì’r, 明朝那些事儿) and the first version of Chun Shu’s Beijing Doll. Xiron publishes upwards of 200 books a year, over 70% of which started out life on the internet.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 15, 7:19p.m.
The Arts Council England has asked me to do some poking around into the state of internet literature in China, and graciously allowed me to concurrently post the results here. Expect more posts on this topic over the next week or so.
First a simple introduction to online literature in China, which will apply to this whole series. Though the internet has played a role in China’s literary scene since the mid-90s, it didn’t come of age as a phenomenon until 2003 or so, when the massive literary sites began to gain momentum. The largest of these sites now host thousands of works of original fiction, posted there by regular users around the country. The line between writers and readers has blurred as users read and critique each others’ writing, and the works with the highest ‘click counts’ climb the charts. Paper-and-ink publishers have taken notice, and many cherry-pick the most popular works from the top of the charts for publication as regular books. The vast majority of online writing is genre-based: romance, sword-and-sorcery, urban noir, etc, and the more high-brow stuff is very rare. The commercial model of these sites is still up in the air, as well. Some charge readers for access to the most popular works, others make money serializing literature to cellphone readers, and many charge agent fees to publishers who cherry-pick their writers. As the sites mature, larger media groups are starting to consider investing or purchasing, though this is still a new trend.
Something to read first: a Danwei translation of an interview with some internet publishers.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 15, 7:18p.m.
…about the Chinese publishing industry, right here. The Arts Council England has published a 300+ page report on the state of Chinese publishing, and its ties to the UK in particular. It's positive, overall, but there's still plenty of gory depictions of an industry deformed and contorted by the conflicting pressures of politics, inertia and market forces. We'll be up late with a flashlight under the covers!
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 7, 11:51p.m.
