China is the largest book publisher in the world and yet reading Chinese novels does not always get very good press. With the six books that we are recommending, we hope to show a different picture: these are books that have been translated over the last two years into French and English and are readily…
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With the epidemic, sales of Camus’ “The Plague” strongly increased in Italy and France. A good omen for Chi Zijian’s novel “Neige et Corbeaux” (1) (White Snow, Black Crows) which has just been translated into French with talent by François Sastourné and published by Editions Philippe Picquier. The novel was released in China in 2010,…
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It’s a pity that Singapore and Malaysian literature is not reviewed more often. In Malaysia, there is a state-sponsored literary life for the Malaysian language and little international exposure, but for literature in English, writers like Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng, are known all over the world. In Singapore, many writers are supported but…
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Yan Lianke is one of the most important contemporary novelists, who could become a Nobel prize winner. A major work, “The Death of the Sun” (La mort du soleil) (1) has just been published by Editions Philippe Picquier, which has done a considerable amount of work, with ten publications, to make Yan Lianke’s novels better…
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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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