We have often spoken of Inspector Chen Cao, the hero of eight detective stories by the Sino-American writer Qiu Xiaolong. While in Paris before joining in Lyon the international festival “Quai du Polar” he could talk about the “Short stories of Red Dust” (Liana Levi, 2013) (1), the second collection which has just been published.…
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For a better understanding of the writer Chi Zijian, I read her short story collections which, outside of China, are hardly mentioned. Yet some of them are of very high standard. She was born in 1964 in the far north of China, near the small town of Mohe, along the Amur River which marks the…
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This article has been posted on the 17th of september 2012, but the link with the English version has been broken. We are also very happy to mention that Tan Twan Eng has won yesterday, the 14th of march, the Man Asia literary prize… Tan Twan Eng is a Malaysian writer of Chinese…
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With a great book by Chi Zijian, “The last quarter of the moon” (1) we discover the twilight of the Evenki, nomadic reindeer herders on “The right bank of the Argun” as mentioned by a more suitable original title. 1 – The Evenki and the Argun River: The Argun River, along 900 kilometers is…
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The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the Chinese writer Mo Yan led to an intense debate in the media, both in China and abroad. Some have strongly regretted that a Communist Party member, vice-president of the Writers’ Union, is awarded the prize, others that Mo Yan is not a radical critique of…
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Shen Congwen is one of the greatest Chinese writers of the pre-war period. Hence the importance of the recent release in France of “The Journey to Xiang and other short stories”(1) that illustrates the talent of the writer in various styles. His life and career are totally atypical. His family is a blend of the…
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The release a few weeks ago of a book by Shen Congwen (which will be discussed later): “The journey to Xiang and other short stories” (1), has led me to read again his translated works and also to discover a remarkable book, “Four sisters of Hofei “by Annping Chin. She was born in Taiwan in…
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When we speak of Mo Yan we specially mention his novels, his “long” novels which sometimes and wrongly scare away some readers. But he wrote more than a hundred short stories and many “short” novels and novellas. As he mentions in his foreword to “Shifu …”, a collection of short stories published in the United…
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A thousand years long tradition had an unintended consequence in recent years, the development of a new literary genre: officialdom novels. This is why it is good news that Penguin China has published a few weeks ago “The civil servant notebook” by Wang Xiaofang, the great master of the genre, translated by Eric Abrahamsen, one…
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Han Dong is almost unknown in France, his books are not yet translated. This is not the case in the UK because of the efforts of a well-known translator Nicky Harman, who was kind enough to answer our many questions about this writer. 1 /The father, a writer, a family “sent to the countryside”: Han…
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