In February 2014, I posted a short analysis of the works of Xiao Hong, one of the most important novelists of 20th century Chinese literature, who died in Hong Kong in 1942, at the age of 31, after a ten years literary career. The anniversary of her death in 2012 provided the opportunity for strong…
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Nearly thirty years after her death, she remains a celebrity in China and Taiwan; a million followers on her Weibo account. Her best-known book “Stories of the Sahara” (1) has just been translated into English. A huge success in 1976 and ten million copies sold after a serial publication by the Taiwanese newspaper “United Daily…
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Jean François Billeter is a well-known Swiss sinologist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva. Some of his books are references such as “The Chinese Art of Writing” (1), which has been translated into English, studies on Zhuangzi (2), an essay on the contemporary history of China, “China three times silenced” (3). Other books…
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Tash Aw is the most famous Malaysian novelist; he was born in Taipei in 1973 and lived in Kuala Lumpur before studying law in Cambridge and working for a few years with a lawyer. He lives in London and currently in Paris for a few months. Three of his novels written in English are translated…
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“Notes of a crocodile” (1) is a short novel, published in Taiwan in 1994, translated two years ago by Bonnie Huie for the prestigious New York Review Books collection, which had already published Qiu Miaojin’s best-known book “Last Words from Montmartre” (2). It took more than twenty years for “Notes…”, which is a famous book…
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Wang Ting-Kuo is a famous novelist in Taiwan; his book, “My enemy’s cherry tree” (1) won numerous award in 2015 and was quickly translated into English after the success, the previous year, of a collection of short stories, one of which, “La Chute” is available in French (2). These texts focus on two male characters…
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Anwar Ridhwan is one of Malaysia’s best-known novelists and has benefited from numerous translations of his works written in Malay. He is a pure product of the system that governs literature in Malaysia both in his academic career and in his professional life as a civil servant. He is one of the thirteen writers declared…
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A book by Jean Marie Gustave Le Clézio has just been published, subtitled “Aventure poétique et échanges littéraires”, it is about “Quinze causeries en Chine” (1), fifteen lectures, selected by his translator and friend Xu Jun; occasional texts but also essays of a very high quality. Xu Jun translated “Desert” in 1983 and then nine…
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An exceptional environment, she was born in 1946 in Shanghai, in a well-known family of bankers. After 1949, the family spent a few years in Hong Kong and then returned to Shanghai. She studied in English and Chinese and finished high school in 1964, too old to be sent “to the countryside”. A year in…
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A good novel has just been published, translated with talent by Brigitte Duzan, assisted by Zhang Xiaoqiu, “Funérailles Molles” (1), immerses us in China’s land reform. Fang Fang is a Chinese novelist known for her neo-realistic novels and her love for the city of Wuhan. Born in 1955, she grew up in Wuhan, finished high…
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