The University of Oklahoma is on the verge of launching a major initiative into Chinese literature, which comes as a surprise to those of us who were twiddling our thumbs, but has actually been in the making for three years now. This initiative comes in two parts: a series of Chinese books to be published starting in 2011, and the launching of a new literary journal, Chinese Literature Today, a sister publication of the venerable World Literature Today, available in Chinese through Beijing Normal University. The new journal will launch next year, and they're soliciting submission, so have at it. The order of the day is "scholarly articles written to be accessible to a wide readership", ie not just smart but well-written, too.
From the Submissions Guidelines (PDF):
World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s College of Arts and Sciences, and Beijing Normal University are pleased to announce an exciting new scholarly journal focusing on contemporary Chinese literature and culture in partnership with NOCFL. The new title, Chinese Literature Today, will feature articles, literary criticism, and original works of fiction and poetry by accomplished scholars and authors from China and abroad. As the editors of Chinese Literature Today, we would like to invite you to take full advantage of this exciting new opportunity by submitting your work today.
In 2006 World Literature Today (WLT), one of America’s oldest periodicals devoted to world literature, began working with China’s most prestigious College of Chinese Language and Literature at Beijing Normal University (BNU) to produce a special issue focusing on China. WLT celebrated this publication in the summer of 2007 by holding the first “China and World Literature Today Conference” in Beijing. Following these initial successes, WLT and BNU began the more ambitious project of initiating a Chinese-language edition, which was unveiled at the “China and World Literature Today International Conference” held in Beijing in October 2008. Many of the nearly three hundred international and Chinese novelists, scholars, editors, and poets who attended the conference voiced a desire to see more Chinese literature and literary criticism available in English translation. Thus, Chinese Literature Today was born.
Submissions should be sent to the CLT editor at clteditor@ou.edu by December 16, 2009.
Download the full submissions guidelines (PDF) here.
Download the CLT styleguide (PDF) here.
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 25, 12:37a.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.
EDIT: We've made a permanent home for the materials we brought to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which you can see by clicking here or following the link under the Explore Paper Republic heading on our home page.
So, very briefly: I and Nicky Harman have arrived in Frankfurt, where we'll be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair through the 28th.
In the near future I'll put up a longer, more detailed post about what we're up to here, but the short version is: we've come with a small packet of seven Chinese books that we think the whole world ought to translate and read. The small version of the packet can be downloaded by clicking here (PDF, right-click to download), and in the next couple of weeks we will be uploading substantial translation samples for each of those books, which can be downloaded separately. Take a look at the packet for now, and let us know what catches your fancy!
Edit
The sample from Han Dong's forthcoming novel Screwed!, can be downloaded here.
Three essays from Liang Wendao's Common Sense are here.
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 15, 5:55a.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.)
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 10, 11a.m.
