Great Chinese Novels in Translation

[victorhart]

My mother likes to read novels about China, but all them were written by Westerners (who had lived for extended periods in China).

 

She would like to recommendations of great Chinese novels, whether classic or contemporary, in translation (to English). Of course, the quality of the translation is very important, too.

 

I'm also curious since one day, maybe in 10 or 20 years (haha), I hope to read Chinese novels in Mandarin.

 

 

 

[Kenny同志]

Take a look at these.

 

The Story of the Stone

 

Moment in Peking

 

Six Chapters of a Floating Life

 

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

 

Note: The third book is an autobiography - well, something like that, and the fourth a collection of short stories.

[Shelley]

Dream of the red mansion

Journey to the west

Watermargin

 

3 that spring instantly to mind.

 

Dream of the red mansion is real classic, as are the other 2 really.

 

I will look at my books and come back with some more later.

[ZhangKaiRong]

A Moment in Peking is a great one, however if you insist on books which were translated from Chinese to English then this one doesn't count since it was published in English and retranslated to Chinese in 1941. If it doesn't bother you or your mother, then you can have a try with Wild Swans as well, from Jung Chang. (also from a PRC author but originally written in English).

 

Other ones to add:

Yu Hua - To live

Yu Hua - Brothers

Yu Hua - Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

Su Tong - Wives and concubines (or Raise the Red Lantern, depending on which edition to read)

Mo Yan - Red sorghum

Eileen Chang - The Rice Sprout Song

[oceancalligraphy]

Is there a genre of novel she likes? YellowBridge has a listing with reviews, broken down into genre and time. 

 

I third Dream of the Red Mansion/Chamber (aka The Story of the Stone), it's a classic romance.

 

Columbia University Press publishes a series of modern translated literature from Taiwan.

[Silent]

There is a quite extensive amount of Chinese literature in English and with only a small number of Chinese books read myself it's tricky to recommend something. And of course personal preferences may differ too.

 

Several of the above mentioned are considered classics and as such have a big influence on Chinese culture. I've not read them so don't know or they are good reads, but for insight in Chinese culture they are a 'must'.

 

Personally I really enjoyed reading wild swans basically just a description of the lives of three generations but with the backdrop of modern Chinese history. I think Yu Hua's work is great to read for a learner in Chinese as they're fairly simple. Personally I would not consider them great literature, but they do give good insights in Chinese live and culture.

 

Mo Yan is of course famous since he got the nobel prize but I've the impression that Lu Xun is considered one of the greatest modern writers by the Chinese themselves. You might also have a look at wikipedia to get some inspiration and leads to interesting reads classic and modern.

[renzhe]

It sounds like your mother is interested in Chinese culture, since I guess that most books written by foreigners living in China will focus heavily on that aspect.

For "old China", I'd recommend "Dream of the Red Chamber" (a.k.a. Story of the Stone, a.k.a Red Mansion), and "Family" by Ba Jin (translation was done by Sidney Shapiro, so it's bound to be great).

For "post-revolution China", Eileen Chang is hard to beat. She has a beautiful style, which might not fully survive the translation, but she paints a very vivid picture of a transitioning China (with a strong late-colonial Hong Kong focus). Lu Xun is arguably the greatest, but his works are heavy, heavy, heavy. If your mother likes Dostoyevski, she might like Lu Xun. Mo Yan might be worth a read, he did win a Nobel after all and magical realism is a fairly accessible genre but I haven't read any of his stuff yet. "Red Sorghum" is one of his most celebrated works, and there is a very famous movie adaptation, so that would be a good choice.

For modern China, I'm not sure. The problem is that much of this stuff does not get translated, and stuff that does ("Shanghai baby" and the like) are not exactly high literature.

I'd also recommend Chinese-related works of Pearl Buck. She's not Chinese, strictly speaking, but she grew up there and is probably the one author who can best understand both worlds and paint China in a way that is both realistic and accessible.

[Zeppa]

The Story of the Stone /Dream of Red Mansions is definitely a great novel. I don't think even Lu Xun can be called a great novel - to get great novels you have to go back to the classics (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West) I think it takes time to get into Story of the Stone, but it's massively rewarding.

 

A modern novel I found fascinating but not great was Banished! The author is Han Dong. It's based on his memories of growing up as part of a family banished to the countryside in the cultural revolution, but it's not a black-and-white analysis of the failures of a communist system - it seems like a picture of what it was really like being uprooted. This was one of the first glimpses of what that time was like. There is an extract here:

http://paper-republic.org/nickyharman/excerpt-from-han-dongs-banished-longlisted-for-the-2008-man-asian-literary-prize/

 

I did read To Live in Chinese, looking up over half on Pleco (there are only about 2,000 different characters in it, I think). I am not sure it would be the first recommendation to someone reading it in English.

 

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress was also made into a film, but I don't know it.

[mandel1luke]

I'd recommend David Hawkes's The Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber), Roy's The Plum in the Golden Vase and Karen Kingsbury's Half a Lifelong Romance (translation of Eileen Chang's Bansheng Yuan). As for Lu Xun, there are three translations of his fiction. All three are accurate but I find the most recent Julia Lovell's Penguin version a bit academic. John Minford's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio is excellent too (though it's more of a collection of weird tales than a novel proper.)

 

There are a few recent translations of Chinese classics (like Border Town, Rickshaw Boy) but I haven't compared them to the original and hence wouldn't hazard a recommendation.