English appreciation of Chinese books

Jo Lusby, managing director with Penguin Books China

Excerpts

Acquaintance with Chinese literature: “I started with a really stronger appreciation for sort of contemporary Chinese fiction, particularly Mo Yan and Yu Hua. There was also a very good anthology of contemporary Chinese writing which was published in the late 1990s. And that collection was translated by Howard Goldblatt, a very well respected translator of Chinese literature. And it was in the early mid-1990s, it was called Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused and it was about 1990s writing. Actually all of the stories in there were by writers like Bi Feiyu, A Lai, Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, Mo Yan. So actually his judgment was really good because now more than 20 years later, it’s still the same writers who’re still the most important in China. So that was where I got the beginning of an appreciation of contemporary Chinese literature.”

Popular Chinese books among English readers: “Turned to 20 years ago, the books that were popular, were mainly memoir books, life stories, people who have lived in China and left China and moved to the West. So those were first books which people encountered from China and the Chinese stories. I think more recently, that range has expanded. Those memoirs are still popular. The majority of the books which are translated from Chinese will be the books by the 50s, 60s men from China, the Mo Yan’s, the Bi Feiyu’s, the Yu Hua’s, the Alai’s. The more popular writing by people like Guo Jinming hasn’t yet really taken an off in the West. Han Han, his works are beginning to be translated, his non-fiction, his essays that beginning to be translated into the West. I think people are very interested in him because he has done a lot of interviews and he has a lot of interesting perspectives. Non-fiction is beginning to be read a little bit more and younger writing is to be read a little bit more.”

Prospect of Chinese books outside China: “I think it’s very promising. You can’t divorce China and the growing international relationship with China. China is much more a part of the global community. While in the past, the majority of the books were foreigner’s writing about China. Now you’re seeing more and more internationally people are very interested in hearing what Chinese people are interested, what Chinese people are saying, what Chinese people are enjoying. That’s definitely more and more interesting to western readers.”

Penguin’s publishing plans for Chinese books: “We’re publishing classics, by very important writers like Lu Xun or Laoshe. And we publish those as modern classics, which is something we really like to build up. China has some wonderful old writers that western readers are not familiar enough with. And then we’re also publishing contemporary fiction mainly. We look for some non-fiction as well. So we publish crime fiction. We recently published in the UK a novel called Decoded by the novelist Mai Jia. It’s done very very well in the UK. It’s been very well received. The next book we have coming up is the English language version of Mo Yan’s novel Frog. This is the first new book by him since he won the Nobel Prize. We’ll publish Mo Yan at the end of the year and we plan to use the buzz and noise in the publicity from Mo Yan to then promote Bi Feiyu. We will publish his novel Massage and then Wang Anyi, her novel, Scent of Heaven. So we have these three novels coming up over the next six months one by one. And then really we’re just turning our attention to the future. We start commissioning some more books. We look for some more great stories that we think we can find readership for. ”

Relationship with Chinese writers: “I think it’s fair to say that Chinese writers don’t have a very big party thing. If you go to the UK or in the US, you’ll meet a lot of writers at parties. In China, it’s more I think one by one, slowly. But I have very good friendship with Chinese writers. There’s very interesting community of writers here who’re very thoughtful. We sat and we talk and they tell me about what they’re working on and what they’re researching. So I have some very good friends among the Chinese writers here certainly.”

Most successful Chinese fiction overseas: “I think to this point, Wolf Totem probably is still the greatest success. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a party held by a Chinese publisher, Changjiang Art Literature and they were celebrating 10 years since the book was originally published in Chinese. We were chatting at the event there’s no single book in this ten years that has done anything close to the success of Wolf Totem. It’s a very unusual book and it’s a book which is a cross-category success. By that I mean very different people read it. It has a very wide appeal.”