“Are you going to let your son die for nothing?”
In the seventy fifth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are surviving The Curse (杨村的一则诅咒 / yáng cūn de yī zé zǔzhòu). My partner for this investigation is literary Sinologist Jeffrey Kinkley. What exactly are we dealing with here? A tale of a backfiring curse, or a backfiring society? For realist writing to penetrate our often nightmarish world and scratch The Real, does it have to get weird first? Detective K and I are on the case. Don’t expect comforting answers.
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// NEWS ITEMS //
- Next London Chinese Sci-fi Group meeting on July 31st: The Strange Girl by Xiu Xinyu, tr Emily Jin
- Caroline Jortay announces publication date for HK Lit anthology from Editions Jentayu
- Chinese woman wrote her own alternate history of Russia on Wikipedia
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(游离 – yóulí – to disassociate)
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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //
- Rudolph Wagner on Chinese Scifi as Lobby Literature
- The Woodpecker, the Chinese justice ministry’s literary journal
- L’Étranger, by Albert Camus
- Two Lives – a recent A Yi short story collection
- Jeffrey’s own Corruption and Realism in Late Socialist China
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The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 