Our News, Your News
By David Haysom, October 20, '16
Following a brief period of dormancy, Read Paper Republic will be reanimated next Thursday (just in time for Halloween!) with a limited run of six new tales in which death is merely the beginning of the story. Every week, one of these stories – populated with ghosts, memories, and otherworldly reincarnations – will be appearing right here, and they will be completely free to read.
We also have some upcoming events happening in London which we'll be announcing soon – watch this space...
"What young parents want their children to take away from stories needs to fit in with the increased diversity, equality, and confidence demanded of us today."
- Chen Jingnan, director and editor, Shanghai Education Television Station
By Bruce Humes, October 18, '16
Two events of interest, including one (2nd below) with Paper Republic's very secretive Eric Abrahamsen:
How to Translate Chinese Literature: Challenges in the Translation Process and Perspectives in Practice
New Literary Voices from China
By Helen Wang, October 17, '16
Maybe it's time to check the Links page on this website? (scroll down to the bottom of your screen - if you're using a big screen, it's on bottom left)
- are these still active?
- are there new ones that we should add?
"A rip-roaring Swiftian satire from a contemporary Chinese master"
The Explosion Chronicles. By Yan Lianke. Translated by Carlos Rojas. Grove Press; 457 pages; $26. To be published in Britain by Chatto & Windus in March 2017.
Anna Holmwood, who translated A Perfect Crime into English, says that the slim novel—which tells the story of a provincial high school student who murders his best friend in cold blood as his peers urgently prepare for the career-defining gaokao—reflects how Chinese authors are adapting modern Western literature to tell stories from their own modernizing society. “I think this is a story that puts the social and the individual into conflict to examine a very real problem in Chinese society: social exclusion,” says Holmwood. “I’m not sure if the story is taking a swing at traditionalism so much as throwing into focus what can happen when the individual becomes disassociated, or divorced, from social norms through discrimination and inequality. Chinese society is curiously scarred by its radical modernism as much as its traditionalism. The tensions between seemingly ‘traditional’ social norms and politicized social structures are fundamentally alienating for those who find themselves at the ‘bottom’ of society.”
Cao Wenxuan's acceptance speech at the Hans Christian Andersen Award ceremony in New Zealand, August 2016. Links to Chinese and English versions.
Join Xu Xi and Bino Realuyo to talk about Xu’s newly released novel That Man In Our Lives (C&R Press 2016). Bino and Xu will perform the book's prelude in a conversation on the transnational novel, metafiction, jazz and Bugs Bunny. Narrator, character, and oh yeah, real people themselves shapeshift in a conversation about the fate of the novel in the era of globalization and China’s ascendance.
Thursday, October 13, 2016 7:00pm
Asian American Writers' Workshop
112 W 27th Street
New York, New York 10001
The study will count and analyze the number, and diversity, of translated works published in the United States, focusing on factors including the languages and countries from which the works originate and the characteristics of the publishers publishing them. By focusing on these factors, the NBF hopes to translators, publishers, and readers with data on the availability and range of translated books in the American marketplace.
One of the world’s great poets, Bei Dao 北岛, was shocked when his son, then in first grade, brought home a poem he was to learn by heart for a Hong Kong schools competition... He resolved that day to create an anthology of poems for his son and other children, and this book is the result. 北岛选编《给孩子的诗》
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 7, '16
Ge Fei's new English novel, The Invisibility Cloak, translated by our own Canaan Morse, is out next week, published by The New York Review of Books Press next week. Ge Fei is visiting the Big Apple and environs, and those of you in Manhattan or Brooklyn have three chances to see him talk about his new book!
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The first event is at Columbia University on October 12th (Wednesday) starting at 4pm, where Ge Fei will be joined by Canaan to discuss the book.
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Then later that evening (October 12th, 7pm) Ge Fei appears at the Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, in conversation with Michael Barron.
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Lastly, he'll be at the China Institute on the 13th (Thursday) at 6:30pm, with Zhang Xudong.
If you're in town, take the opportunity to see Ge Fei talk! He's a great writer, a great big brain, and a wonderful speaker.
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 3, '16
We've got a new look! With thanks to Sun Xiaoxi, the designer behind the 2015 BIBF look. 21st century, here we come!
It's possible that people using truly ancient versions of Internet Explorer might have some difficulties – please let me know in the comments.
Meanwhile, this will be a good starting place from which to start working on better entry points to the database. A nice winter project...
On International Translators Day and the last day of World Kid Lit Month, expert on Chinese children’s literature and Princeton University librarian Minjie Chen talks more about where Chinese children’s literature has been, where it is now, and where it might be going.
Expert on Chinese children’s literature and Princeton University librarian Minjie Chen answered one of the perennial questions about translation.
As someone who looks both at Chinese literature (in translation) and American literature that portrays Chinese experience, how do you respond to the perennial question: Why translate when “we already have Chinese stories in English”?
The incentives to self-censor are obvious. A writer whose creativity finds expression within (or just outside) the bounds of what is permissible can live very comfortably. Yan believes that Chinese literature pays a price for self-censorship, however, in terms of diminished international influence.
“The reason Chinese literature is paid attention to is because people pay attention to Chinese political restrictions. That doesn’t mean the literature is good,” he [Yan Lianke] says.
By David Haysom, September 26, '16
From the Newman Prize homepage:
While the deliberations were tough, after a process of positive elimination voting Wang Anyi emerged as the winner. Wang Anyi’s nominator, Dai Jinhua (戴锦华, Peking University), writes in her nomination statement: “Over the past thirty or more years, Wang Anyi has continuously transformed her writing and altered her literary directions to produce a spectacular array of works, through which she has created a sort of reality of Chinese-language literature, a city in literature, or even a nation in literature.”
Wang Anyi's story "Dark Alley" (translated by Canaan Morse) was the 47th release of Read Paper Republic Season 1.
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 23, '16
English PEN has this program called "PEN Presents", where they provide translators with funding to promote books they want to translate, and this year they're accepting applications from East and South-East Asia. From their announcement
PEN Presents aims to help publishers to discover – and publish – the most exciting books from around the world, whilst supporting emerging translators in their development as advocates for international literature. Each year the initiative presents six exciting books by contemporary authors, recommended by literary translators, which have not yet been acquired for English-language publication. Each round of PEN Presents focusses on a different region of the world.
They're working with the Asia Literary Review for this year's program – see this link for application instructions. The deadline is December 5, 2016.
「有評論家將韓寒叫做公共知識分子，並將其與魯迅相比較。不論他們的相似度有多少，當我們回頭去看魯迅的一些作品，比如《立論》，會發現韓寒以幽默的筆觸去評論時事的風格和魯迅很相似，這很有意思，」 劉欣和周華在郵件中寫道。
By Helen Wang, September 16, '16
NEW RESOURCE: Chinese books for young readers - from Helen Wang, Anna Gustafsson Chen, Minjie Chen - launched this week!
First five posts:
(1) Chinese books for young readers
(2) Gerelchimeg Blackcrane
(3) Chinese children's literature and the UK National Curriculum
(4) Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
(5) The Reason for Being Late
Curtin University’s China Australia Writing Centre (CAWC) is a research and creative partnership between Curtin University and Shanghai’s Fudan University.
It will host its inaugural literary event this Saturday, when Creative Conversations presents four sessions involving high-profile Australian and Chinese participants working across a range of disciplines from law and journalism to poetry and fiction.
Bugs Bunny, the Novel, and Transnationalism - Ysabelle Cheung interviews Xu Xi in the LA Review of Books
英译稿很重要，但英译稿很贵。除了英译稿，我们还可以选择其他的语种。。。
By Bruce Humes, September 2, '16
Ahramonline reports:
An Arabic edition of the magazine Chinese Literature has been launched during the Beijing International Book Fair and will be distributed for free starting October as a periodical magazine issued every three months in partnership with the Egyptian cultural newspaper Al-Kahera.
The magazine, which is already published in 10 languages and comprises fiction, poetry and art, will be published under the name Beacons of the Silk Road, and will introduce contemporary Chinese literature to Arabic readers.
I'm wondering: Is this the newest edition of Pathlight?
By David Haysom, August 28, '16
Nutshell, Ian McEwan’s new novel, is narrated by a sentient foetus who listens in on the Hamlet inspired machinations of his mother’s plot to murder his father. In a Guardian interview, McEwan says he is not aware of any story yet written from the perspective of an unborn child:
“And yet it seemed obvious once I started it.” The idea came to him one day from nowhere, while he was daydreaming. “Suddenly there appeared before me the opening sentence of the novel, which I don’t think I’ve changed, apart from adding ‘So’ in front of it: ‘So, here I am upside down in a woman.’ I thought, who on Earth would say such a thing? Then I immediately thought it would be a lovely rhetorical challenge to write a novel from the point of view of a foetus. The idea struck me as so silly that I just couldn’t resist it.”
Well, 李洱 Li Er, for one, has beaten him to it, with his story 《你在哪》 (translated by Joshua Dyer as “Where Are You?” in the Summer 2015 issue of Pathlight). Here’s how it begins:
Where are you, she asks.
I’ve been here all along. She must be completely blind now. I reach out to touch her. I feel her chest and notice her heartbeat is irregular, sometimes stopping altogether. She lets me touch her ears. I find a thick, sticky pus leaking out.
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