Yan Lianke is one of the most important present Chinese writers, certainly a candidate for a Nobel prize. Seven of his novels have been translated into French, but few short stories or short novels. Therefore, we welcome that a novel, published in 1999, is translated into English (1). A book that the author published before…
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The latest novel by Su Tong, “Tale of the Siskin” (1) has just been released in France. A great book which, like his previous novel “The boat to redemption” (2), was translated by the talented Francois Sastourné. Leading literary awards: Man Asia 2009 award for “The boat…” and especially the ninth Mao Dun prize in…
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Xu Xiaobin is a famous writer in China, three novels have been translated into English. A romantic style but sometimes including some social reality. “Crystal Wedding” fifteen years of the life of a couple: Yang Tianyi, the heroin is, as says the author, a woman, a pretty ordinary intellectual and she tells us the fifteen…
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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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