Chinese literature - viewing this emerging superpower through its novels
Mariella Frostrup discusses Chinese literature and how we can view this emerging superpower through its novels. Plus, Eleanor Updale on telling a story in the space of one minute.
In October the Nobel prize for Literature was awarded to Mo Yan, the pen name of the Chinese novelist Guan Moye. Mo Yan translates as 'Don't speak' , a warning given to him by his parents during the Cultural Revolution. His latest novel translated into English, Pow!, is set in Slaughterhouse village and tells the story of a rural community obsessed with meat and the deadly extent they will go to in order to maximise a profit in animal flesh. Mo Yan's translator Howard Goldblatt and novelist and film maker Xiaolu Guo discuss the nature of Chinese literature and how much Mo Yan and his fellow contemporary Chinese novelists can teach us about life inside this emerging world force.In the imaginary town of Heathwick a series of bombs are about to explode killing, maiming and destroying lives among the residents. However it's not the aftermath of these cataclysmic events that Eleanor Updale, the acclaimed author of the Montmorency books for children explores, but the sixty seconds leading up to them. In her latest novel, The Last Minute, each chapter charts the passage of a mere second as we journey toward disaster with her doomed cast. As readers we're aware that a tragedy is going to strike, but not to whom or indeed the cause of the explosion to come.Literary critic Suzi Feay delves into the world of the debut novel and examines the latest Waterstones' 11 list of new fiction writers, how well their past predictions have done and why she feels now is a good time to be a debut novelist.Producer: Andrea Kidd.
Last on
Read the Opening Chapter of The Last Minute by Eleanor Updale
Booklist
Chinese literature:
Pow! – Mo Yan Translated by Howard Goldblatt
Publisher: Seagull Books
UFO in Her Eyes – Xiaolu Guo
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers – Xiaolu Guo
Publisher: Vintage
Other books mentioned by Xiaolu Guo:
Dream of Ding Village – Yan Lianke
Publisher: Corsair
To Live – Hua Yu, Yu Hua
Publisher: Anchor Books
Raise the Red Lantern – Su Tong
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
Suzi Feay:
Suzi Feay: The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones – Jack Wolf
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Seldom Seen – Sarah Ridgard
Publisher: Hutchinson Waterstones
Waterstones 11 debut novels lists, as mentioned by Suzi Feay:
Waterstones 11
2013
Pig’s Foot by Carlos Acosta (Bloomsbury, 30th October)
Idiopathy by Sam Byers (Fourth Estate, 25th April)
Y by Marjorie Celona (Faber and Faber, 17th January)
The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence (Hodder & Stoughton, 31st January)
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador, 29th August)
The Fields by Kevin Maher (Little, Brown, 7th March)
The Son by Michel Rostain (Tinder Press, 23rd May)
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland, 27th June)
Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera (William Heinemann, 26th September)
Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi (Viking, 4th April)
Ballistics by D.W. Wilson (Bloomsbury, 1st August)
2012
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
Absolution by Patrick Flanery
Shelter by Frances Greenslade
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen
Signs of Life by Anna Raverat
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles
2011
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
The Free World by David Bezmozgis
The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages by Sophie Hardach
22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson
Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud
The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
Broadcasts
- Sun 20 Jan 2013 16:00Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
- Thu 24 Jan 2013 15:30Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
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