Mapping China: Literature - Authors

The Big Three

Since the eighties, just as in post-war Netherlands, China has witnessed the emergence of a ‘big three’: the novelists Mo Yan, Su Tong and Yu Hua, who all gained international recognition through films made by the acclaimed film director Zhang Yimou.

For Mo Yan (1956) it is all about history. He achieved immediate fame with his debut novel Red Sorghum (Het rode korenveld) (1986; for Dutch translations see below), an epic tale both baroque and critical in style about the Sino-Japanese war of the 1940s. The rewriting of official revolutionary history would continue to play a role in his later work, but occasionally he also broaches a social question, as in his latest novel Frog (Kikkers) (2009) about China's one-child policy. In 2012 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Su Tong (1963) seems to be a completely different writer. His work is characterized by the loner, who is always placed in a threatening position: the lonely concubine in Raise the Red Lantern (De rode lantaarn) (1987), the poor provincial man in the city in Rice (Rijst) (1991), and the child emperor who would prefer to be a normal citizen in My Life as Emperor (Mijn leven als keizer) (1992). All of Su Tong's characters hanker after freedom, which means these books can certainly be read as allegories.

Yu Hua (1960) does not focus so much on the loner, but on the Chinese Everyman. In such books as To Live (Leven!) (1992) and De bloedverkoper (1996) (Chronicle of a Blood Merchant), he portrays with great compassion the trials and tribulations of the average Chinese citizen through the turbulent events of twentieth-century China. In his influential bestseller Brothers (Broers) (2006), he uses his well-known graphic style to draw a comparison between the absurdities of the Cultural Revolution and the excesses of current consumer society.

A ‘big three’ cannot exist without there being a female fourth: grande dame Wang Anyi (1954), whose Song of Everlasting Sorrow (Lied van het eeuwig verdriet) (1995) shows her as being both a sensitive and ironic chronicler of her city, Shanghai.

Notes

• Previously, Mo Yan's books were published by Bert Bakker; currently, starting with his latest novel Kikkers (Frog), his publisher is De Geus, who has also published De sandelhoutstraf (Sandal Wood Death) and Het rode korenveld (Red Sorghum).
• Su Tong's De rode lantaarn (Raise the Red Lantern) was published in 1994 by Contact, followed by two novels by De Geus and one by De Bezige Bij.
• All of Yu Hua’s novels have been published by De Geus, including Broers (Brothers) and De zevende dag (The Seventh Day).
• Wang Anyi’s epic Shanghai novel has only appeared in French and English (The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, Columbia University Press).
• The younger generation has been translated less: in Dutch there have been Mian Mian’s Candy (Arena) and Wei Hui’s Shanghai baby (Contact); Xu Zechen has appeared in English (Running Through Beijing, Two Lines), as has Sheng Keyi (Northern Girls, Penguin).
• Modern Chinese classics are rarely translated, a few exceptions are these novels: De reizen van Lao Can (The Travels of Lao Can, 1907) by Liu E (Augustus), De riksjarenner (Rickshaw Boy, 1937) by Lao She (Meulenhoff), and Belegerde vesting (Fortress Besieged, 1947) by Qian Zhongshu (Athenaeum).

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