Chinese Literature

Two current news pieces on literature in China – present and future:

The World has yet to See the Best of Chinese Literature by Samantha Kuok Leese in The Spectator (UK): “…it’s early days for modern Chinese literature…the issue must be understood in the context of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong’s atrocious campaigns all but shut down education, and left a frightening number of Chinese people illiterate. Writers in China are now suffering the aftereffects…”

The Future of the Novel in China published by the Guardian UK is an edited version of Li Er’s speech at the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference 2012-2013, Beijing, translated by Alice Xin Liu. “China’s mass media-connected society is more complicated than novelists in the west could ever have imagined, requiring new forms of storytelling to define our subjective experience.” Full versions of this and all the speeches are available on the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference website.