Time Magazine on the New Lu Xun Translation

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1943086,00.html

Lu Xun was a towering figure in Chinese letters who deserves to be much more widely read outside his homeland. This affordable volume comprises, over 416 pages, his complete fiction. Julia Lovell's are arguably the most accessible translations yet of such famous stories as "The Divorce," "New Year's Sacrifice" and the eponymous tale of Ah-Q (an opportunistic, inept sometime participant in the 1911 Revolution). Together, they give Lu Xun his best shot to date of achieving renown beyond the Chinese world. If it succeeds in this, the book could be considered the most significant Penguin Classic ever published.

Comments

# 1.   

Behind most discussions of Chinese literature's acceptance in the west, there's the (usually) unspoken acknowledgement that reading Chinese literature, particularly reading Chinese literature in order to understand China, is a project: it is essentially a course of education, one that has to progress in a certain order, with certain goals in mind.

"Unspoken" more often than not because who wants to feel that they're being educated? Is that any way to sell a book? What happened to just enjoying a bit of fiction?

But the education is almost a prerequisite for the enjoyment, and in this article Jeffrey Wasserstrom throws off the camouflage of consumerist gratification and says, "read this book because it will teach you the first things you need to know about China." It's a claim that could harm the cause if it were made about the wrong book, but in this case it's not about the wrong book. May this article push the book, and with it Chinese literature, into the limelight!

 Eric Abrahamsen, November 28, 11:27p.m.

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