Has it been a year already? The long list for the 2008 Man Asia Literary Prize has been announced; only three of the twenty titles are Chinese. In our corner:
- Banished!, by Han Dong, translated by our very own Nicky Harman!
- Leave Me Alone, Chengdu (成都，今夜请将我遗忘), by Murong Xuecun.
- Brothers, by Yu Hua.
The qualification rules for the competition state that the books need to be submitted in English manuscript, but the English version must not have been published yet. Banished! and Brothers have publication dates, but I hadn't heard that anyone was translating Leave Me Alone, Chengdu. Murong Xuecun's appearance on the list is interesting – he was one of the early internet authors, writing vaguely adolescent stories of youth and urban anomie, but he's taken on a steadily more 'serious' tone. I haven't read Chengdu, but I head it's pretty good. Anyway, if anyone knows who translated either Brothers or Chengdu, leave a comment! The shortlist arrives September 1st, the final winner to be announced at the end of September.
Via Three Percent.
Update: Murong Xuecun's book was translated by Harvey Thomlinson, and there's a lengthy excerpt online here.
Comments
Congratulations, Nicky and Han Dong! Can't wait to read the English translation.
Any chance of putting up an excerpt - with publisher permission, of course - on this site?
Cindy Carter, July 24, 2008, 8:42p.m.
Congratulations, Nicky!
Roy Kesey, July 25, 2008, 12:31a.m.
I am so happy to see Murong Xuecun's book is on the list too. He is a super nice guy with great sense of humor. Good Luck to him and good luck to the other authors.
Joy Ma, July 25, 2008, 12:18p.m.
Murong Xuecun has been translated in french as "Oublier Chengdu" by Claude Payen and published by Editions de l'Olivier in 2006. The book is certainly worth reading .Congratulations Eric for the interesting comments on your blog...
Bertrand Mialaret, July 27, 2008, 10:24p.m.
Thanks for visiting, Bertrand! It's true – French-language translators and publishers are ahead of us almost every time… It would be nice to keep track here of which Chinese novels have made it into other languages, maybe we'll put that on the list for the future.
Eric Abrahamsen, July 28, 2008, 5:44a.m.
I went to the Murong book talk tonight in Beijing and enjoyed him speaking.
I can see you now know his name but his translator and publisher was there on stage to facilitate the bi-lingual conversation. He formed the publishing company last year, Make-Do Publishing.
Helen, March 7, 2010, 2:34p.m.