MCLC: five great reads

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: five great reads
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Source: TimeOut Beijing (12/3/13):
http://www.timeoutbeijing.com/features/Books__Film-Interviews__Features/257
56/Five-great-winter-reads.html

Five great winter reads
Five experts’ offer their picks on books about, and from, China

(1) I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust
Picked by Alice Xin Liu, an editor at Pathlight magazine.

‘It’s not every day that a Chinese poet and her translator make the poetry
sing. Usually only one does this, while the other gets it completely
wrong. Fiona Sze-Lorrain, the translator of this collection by Yu Xiang,
is a noted poet herself, and her rendition of Yu Xiang’s poems, published
this year by Zephyr Press, is a feat. In one poem, “Street”, we read,
“Just talk about the street, at vendor stalls / we drink beer, peel
edamame beans / Just peel open the summer tagging behind us / like a juicy
fruit, it ripens overnight / and rots. In summer / just peel open the past
tagging behind us.” “Peel open” is a wonderful description of season, of
time, but also of edamame. Just as poetry brings us into another world,
translation can be an act of successful recomposition and reconstitution.’

I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust by Yu Xiang is available
fromwww.zephyrpress.org <http://www.zephyrpress.org/> for 91.50RMB.

(2) The Hall of Uselessness
Picked by John Garnaut, author of The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo.

‘The faster China changes, and the harder it is to keep up, the further
back I seem to reach in search of answers. There are few books that hold
up better than this collection of essays, first published by the
Belgian-Australian sinologist Pierre Ryckmans under the pseudonym Simon
Leys, now republished as The Hall of Uselessness. Leys illuminates China’s
reverential and brutal relationship with its past. He offers answers to
some of the great riddles of Chinese statecraft, such as why Chinese
rulers care so much for words. Confucius re-emerges as an iconoclastic
hero. Calligraphy and Chinese painting are raised to the sublime. The
secrets of Chinese immortality, he convincingly argues, are embedded
exclusively in the written word. However, anyone who has ever been dubbed
a “China Expert” cannot fail to be a little traumatised by his clinical
dissection of the species.’

The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays by Simon Leys is available from
The Bookworm, priced 170RMB.

(3) Empress Dowager Cixi
Picked by Marysia Juszczakiewicz, founder of Peony Literary Agency.

‘I always follow what Jung Chang writes – I think she is an icon in the
West when it comes to Chinese literature and knowledge of China. Wild
Swanswas such a groundbreaking book, and it was one of the first times
that Chinese history was introduced to a wider readership abroad. Jung’s
most recent book, Empress Dowager Cixi, does not disappoint. Jung always
presents an unusual and interesting point of view. Cixi is usually shown
to be tyrannical and vicious, but Jung portrays her as refreshingly
groundbreaking and forward-thinking. Jung has also used some newly
available Chinese historical documents such as court records, official and
private correspondence, diaries and eye-witness accounts. Above all, a
thought-provoking read.’

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung
Chang is available from The Bookworm, priced 170RMB.

(4) The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo
Picked by Lisa Brackmann, author of Rock Paper Tiger and Hour of the Rat.

‘The Bo Xilai case has got to be one of the most bizarre, over-the-top
political scandals in recent history. But there’s a lot more to it than
the salacious details of murdered British fixers, love triangles involving
a corrupt, fashion-obsessed police chief, and French villas. In The Rise
and Fall of the House of Bo, John Garnaut provides much-needed context
about political rivalries that are, in part, family affairs with roots in
the fratricidal conflicts of the Cultural Revolution. I only hope that he
does an updated version covering the respective trials of Bo and Gu and
the implications for China’s leadership. Besides, I want to learn more
about those gifts of rare African bush meat and Segways...’

The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo by John Garnaut is available from The
Bookworm, priced 80RMB.

(5) Pow!
Picked by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, our Books editor

‘Mo Yan’s fantastical, frenetic Pow! – the first of his novels to be
published in English since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year
– follows Luo Xiaotong, a wildly unreliable narrator, who has grown up in
a community of butchers. When we meet Xiaotong he is a man, not yet 20,
consumed with a lust for flesh. It manifests itself in desire for both
meat – whether pig, camel, cow or dog – and women. Mo writes with a cruel
tongue. Few emerge unscathed and there is no hint of sentimentality for
the Chinese countryside where the writer himself grew up. Contrasting with
this bawdy subject matter is precise, poetic language, rendered here
beautifully by Mo’s long-time translator, Howard Goldblatt. Mo can depict
a character in the smell of their hands or the quivering of their nostril
hair. Pow! was first published a decade ago in Chinese, yet its resonance
remains. Above all, it brilliantly captures China in all its gruesome
glory.’

Pow! by Mo Yan is available from The Bookworm, priced 220RMB.