The past year has seen another bumper harvest of China books released both here and abroad. Time Out
asks the experts to share their best titles of 2012
Northern Girls by Sheng Keyi (translated by Shelly Bryant)
One of the great challenges facing Chinese writers is taking the dramatic, often bizarre reality of their historical and social surroundings and turning it into unique, convincingly felt fiction. Sheng Keyi’s Northern Girls [Penguin] succeeds: set against a backdrop of Hunanese girls moving to Shenzhen to look for work, the novel exhibits the same vital energy and joy that keeps its protagonist, Hong, afloat, as she adventures into the city to look for work.
While other girls like her descend into prostitution and degradation, Hong’s indomitable sense of self keeps her from despair. Her physical charms and sexuality – the very things that lead to the downfall of the other girls – remain for Hong the source of her strength, and her eventual triumph. A narrative that shifts in and out of reality keeps this book – themed around a highly topical subject – firmly rooted in the author’s artistic imagination.
Eric Abrahamsen is the editor of Paper Republic and an award-winning literary translator. Northern Girls is available from Garden Books for 230RMB.
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen PlattWeighing in at 471 pages and chronicling a saga of killing and destruction on a massive scale, Stephen Platt’s Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom [Knopf and Atlantic Books] is not an obvious stocking-filler. But for anybody who wants to understand China’s history it is an essential read. The narrative powers through the story of the mid-19th century Taiping Rebellion, which marked the onset of the decline of the Qing dynasty and eventually led to the end of the empire in 1912. This is a book filled with extraordinary characters, both among the rebels and the Han gentry who raised armies to come to the rescue of the foreign dynasty.
Platt brings to light the role of the British who refused to aid the rebels, despite their pursuit of Christianity with Chinese characteristics, but also launched the 1860 expedition
against the emperor in Beijing. All in all, a superb account of a drawn-out, devastating episode that poses interesting and awkward questions.
Jonathan Fenby is author of Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How it Got There and Where It is Heading
. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom is available from Garden Books for 180RMB.
Midnight in Peking by Paul FrenchIt should have taken a Chinese historian and novelist to write such a true crime story as Midnight in Peking [Penguin] – instead it has been taken on by an English expat living in Shanghai.
The story starts on a cold night in early 1937 in Peking where people inside the ancient city walls teeter in nervous anticipation of Japanese invasion, when the savagely mutated body of a young British girl, Pamela Werner, is found under a watchtower legendarily
haunted by fox spirits. The macabre crime shocks the smug, decadent circle of Western expatriates there.
For a number of reasons, the investigation of the murder case was never solved, until now. This is a period little touched in Chinese history or literature and it falls on French’s lap of fortune to unearth the real life story which he relays in a gripping, suspenseful thriller.
Qiu Xiaolong is author of The Inspector Chen Series
. Midnight in Peking
is available from Garden Books for 255RMB.
This Generation by Han Han (translated by Allan Barr)Though not exactly a ‘literary star’ – Han Han’s forte is not writing fiction – his non-fiction is more piercing than any novel he could write, or has written. In This Generation [Simon and Schuster] it is rendered expertly by translator Allan Barr. Barr brings out the irony, comedy and indignance in recent quintessential Han Han essays on topics such as the Wenzhou rail crash and Weibo.
Han Han’s style is never loose, but direct with a twisted sense of logic. He gives the reader what they want but doesn't do so without a fight. It’s a book that makes you think, with a trajectory that’s twisted and spiraled. Similar to the way the Chinese government makes you think. The difference is that Han Han has a clear head and a strong mind, and never quails for lesser morals – most of the time.
Alice Xin Liu is editor of Pathlight
, the first English version of People’s Literature
. This Generation
is available from Garden Books for 240RMB.
1. The Hunger Games (2008, Scholastic Press) by Suzanne Collins, 60RMB
2. A Song of Ice and Fire 5: A Dance With Dragons (2011, Bantam) by George RR Martin, 55RMB
3. One Day (2009, Vintage) by David Nicholls, 65RMB
1. Red Sorghum (1987, Penguin) by Mo Yan, 170RMB
2. Think Like Chinese (2008, Federation Press) by Haihua Zhang and Geoff Baker, 220RMB
3. Luxury Fashion Branding: Trends, Tactics, Techniques (2007, Palgrave Macmillan) by Uche Okonkwo, 430RMB
