– Hong Kong
Imagine if every British novel published since the 1940s was about the Second World War. That’s about as accurate a view of contemporary China held by readers in the Anglophone West, say experts here.
On the eve of this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize announcement, it’s worth considering why that’s still the case. The prize celebrates Asian literature written in, or translated into, English. While eligible authors span the continent from Japan to Iran, all previous winners have come from East Asia, and three out of those five from China.
Harvey Thomlinson, a Hong Kong-based publisher, also had a mission to highlight quality Chinese literature in English translation. Internet fiction and experimental short stories are two ways in which younger writers are contributing to the variety of authorship in China.
However, Thomlinson noticed that the range of Chinese fiction selected for translation by trade publishers in the West ‘tended to be restricted to a few genres that aren’t representative of the diversity of Chinese writing today’.
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