Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Kenshur Prize, Bloomington Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies"
"Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize"
"Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, McGill University"
"A History Today Book of the Year"
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Harrison digs equally in Chinese and European archives, finding abundant vivid material from which to reconstruct [Li and Staunton’s] stories, weaving them together to rewrite the opening chapter of Sino–British relations as a series of unfortunate events in which a word, a look or a gesture could alter the course of the encounter. . . . An invigorating re-vision. . . . Harrison’s strength is in narrating lives lived and reminding us that the consequences were never preordained.
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---Timothy Brook, Times Literary Supplement"
Today the fiasco of 1793 is the postulate for an elaborate paradigm that is supposed to explain China’s decline in power in the 19th century. . . . But the paradigm is problematic: it isn’t only ahistorical but, as Henrietta Harrison suggests in The Perils of Interpreting, it focuses on the wrong people.
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---Pamela Crossley, London Review of Books"
Harrison could not have picked two more fascinating men to focus her book on. Both Li and Staunton lived truly extraordinary lives and the reader is led vividly through each. . . . Not only is The Perils of Interpreting an empathetic portrait of two men, it also deftly reveals the critical importance of translation and of interpreters—for without them neither cross-cultural interactions nor cross-cultural understanding can even begin.
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---Sarah Bramao-Ramos, History Today"
Often the most readable books on Chinese history are those that use detailed accounts of the lives of individuals to illuminate the great events of their time. Oxford professor Henrietta Harrison’s The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire is a fine example, providing a fresh description of the 1793 embassy from Britain’s King George III to the Manchu Qianlong emperor through the eyes of those who mediated, rather than those of the principals.
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---Peter Neville-Hadley, South China Morning Post Magazine"[
The Perils of Interpreting] reads like a swashbuckling adventure novel. . . . [A] vivid reconstruction of an era."
---John Krich, Nikkei Asia"
[The Perils of Interpreting] takes a familiar story—the deteriorating diplomacy between Britain and Qing China from the 1793 Macartney Mission and the Opium War—and masterfully retells it through the lives of two translators.
" * History Today *
"[Harrison’s] prose is pictorial and vivacious, effortlessly carrying the reader into a new domain of empathy and historical awareness. The unique and intimate stories of translators offer an antidote to simplistic accounts. . . . The result is a book that thoroughly transforms what we know about Sino-British encounters leading up to the Opium War."
---Jenny Huangfu Day, Journal of Chinese History"Marvelous."
---Haun Saussy, Journal of the American Oriental Society"
The Perils of Interpreting offers extraordinarily fresh information deftly crafted into a narrative embracing biography, imperial history, maritime history, British political history, religious history, and the history of Chinese and British relations. Harrison, an adroit storyteller, designed the book as a chronologically told story of two men, two cultures, and two imperial powers attempting to communicate between worlds. . . . Harrison’s attention to interpretation, its delicacy, its omissions as well as its expressions reveals how power inheres in language, and power is as much in the hands of translators as in the hands of leaders of state. This fascinating, deeply researched, highly informed account is microhistory at its very best."
---Carla Mulford, The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer"Harrison’s rich book opens up so many lines of inquiry that it is bound to produce a wealth of follow-up studies. Let us hope that they will be as eye-opening and enjoyable to read."
---Eun Kyung Min, Eighteenth-Century Studies"Fascinating."
---Hamish Gobson, Think Scotland
