By now you've probably seen Flavorwire's 50 Works of Fiction in Translation That Every English Speaker Should Read. I found it presumptuously titled, annoyingly laid out, and repetitively repetitive in its tastemaking, but at least it covers the standards, some works I've been meaning to read, and some books I'm glad to be introduced to (I get annoyed by the privileging of fiction over other literary genres, but novels serve at least to limit the selection criteria).
But evidently Jason Diamond, who compiled the list, doesn't believe the fiction of the world's longest-standing civilization, its most populous country, and a rising power on the global stage (with two Nobel literature laureates in the last fifteen years) deserves to be read by every English speaker. Among the fifty novels listed, with many repeats of Russian, Spanish, French, and German, not a single one was written in Chinese or by a Chinese writer.
Not a single Chinese title in Flavorwire's "50 Works of Fiction in Translation That Every English Speaker Should Read"
By Lucas Klein, published
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