We will commemorate on next July 1st the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. Hopefully the Brexit will not overshadow these celebrations. This battle in a few months took away the lives of a million people, 420,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers, 30,000 dead on the first day of the battle … The…
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The French Concession of Shanghai is a fascinating episode in French colonial history and development of Shanghai. A “thriller”by Xiao Bai, has just been published and re-creates with talent and a remarkable historical accuracy the turbulences of the year 1931 in the “French Concession”.Once the book is finished, many questions remain which can be met…
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A film screened at the festival “Book District”, a week scheduled by the Academy and the Hall of the fifth district of Paris. One evening where Gao Xingjian also presented his poetry, translated by Noël Dutrait (1), his friend, an academic well known in particular for translating the works of two Nobel Prize Gao Xingjian…
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The Diaoyu Islands (Sendaku) are located 200 km NE of Taiwan and 400 km SE of Okinawa. They are uninhabited and were part, with Taiwan, of the territorial conquests of Japan after the defeat of China and the treaty of Simonoseki (1895). At the end of World War II, Chiang Kai-shek refused to occupy…
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Han Suyin passed away three years ago in Lausanne. She is one of the few authors that I do not want to read because her hagiography of the most questionable episodes in the recent history of China is quite unbearable. But a friend advised me to read “And the rain my drink” written in Malaysia…
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Feng Tang is a writer famous in China but controversial as a result of certain publications considered by censorship as pornographic. It is not a camouflage; nothing political in his books, no direct social criticism. The behavior of his heroes, however, shows a failure to adapt and sometimes a reject of excessive consumption.. …
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Keris Mas (1922-1992) is a major writer of Malay literature. Militant in the 1950s against British colonialism and in favor of “art for the people”, he will try to decrease obstacles against progress in society while justifying in his four novels and sixty short stories the necessary compromise between tradition and modernity. Two…
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This 1st of January marks the end of the one-child policy in China. Many comments highlighted the demographic and economic consequences of this decision. Xinran’s book, “The single child” just translated into French from the English version “Buy me the sky”, focuses on the impact of this generation of children, on cultural values of the…
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Qiu Miaojin is a cult author in Taiwan and not only in the gay communities. Translation, last year of “Last words from Montmartre” in a prestigious collection (1) will make a name for this talented young woman who committed suicide in Paris in 1995 a few weeks after her 26 birthday. – A cult status…
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We will shy away from the seasonal reporting exercises, which, for Chinese literature, do not have much sense. We will just try to ask ourself a few questions after following the excellent MOOC “Writing for the web”, organized by Rue89. However, to promote Chinese literature, the web is necessary but not always sufficient. Read and…
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