Search results for ""Author Jeremy Tiang""

"The Secret Talker is a profound meditation on love, the difficulties of communication and the agonizing joy and brutality of commitment." -- THE NEW YORK TIMESA NEW YORK TIMES BEST THRILLER OF 2021 AND "GLOBETROTTING" PICK!A woman reclaims her own story in this taut and wholly original literary tale from one of China’s literary superstars.Hongmei is the perfect Chinese wife: beautiful, diligent, passive. Glen is the perfect American husband: intelligent, caring, well-off. From the outside, Hongmei and Glen's life in the San Francisco Bay Area seems perfect. But at home, their marriage is falling apart. Post-its left on the fridge are their primary form of communication. When Hongmei receives a beguiling email from a secret admirer, naturally she’s intrigued. But what starts out as harmless flirting with an internet stranger quickly turns into an all-consuming emotional affair. As Hongmei spills more and more about her dark past as a military intelligence officer-in-training in China, she falls deeper and deeper into a tense cat-and-mouse game. Desperate and self-destructive, she embarks on an investigation into her emailer’s secret history…one that may tear her life and marriage apart forever.A psychological story at its core, The Secret Talker elegantly examines how repressed desire and simmering silence can upend even the most idyllic marriage. As Hongmei pursues her stalker, her identity and agency come into question, and the chase curveballs into a captivating journey of self-actualization. Yan Geling pierces the human psyche to reveal devastating and emotional truths – and an ending that will leave readers speechless.Translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang

Read more less

In this sprawling, award-winning novel, celebrated Chinese writer Liu Xinwu cordially invites you to an epic, riotous, and moving neighborhood feast. On a December morning in 1982, the courtyard of a Beijing siheyuan—a lively quadrangle of homes—begins to stir. Auntie Xue’s son Jiyue is getting married today, and she is determined to make the day a triumph. Despite Jiyue’s woeful ignorance in matters of the heart—and the body. Despite a chef in training tasked with the onerous responsibility of preparing the banquet. With a cross-generational multitude of guests, from anxious family members to a fretful bridal party—not to mention exasperating friends, interfering neighbors, and wedding crashers—what will the day ahead bring? Set at a pivotal point after the turmoil of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Liu Xinwu’s tale weaves together a rich tapestry of characters, intertwined lives, and stories within stories. The Wedding Party is a touching, hilarious portrait of life in this singular city, all packed into a Beijing courtyard on a single day that manages to be both perfectly normal and utterly extraordinary at the same time.

Read more less

In Taiwanese writer Lo Yi-Chin’s Faraway, a fictionalized version of the author finds himself stranded in mainland China attempting to bring his comatose father home. Lo’s father had fled decades ago, abandoning his first family to start a new life in Taiwan. After travel between the two countries becomes politically possible, he returns to visit the son he left behind, only to suffer a stroke. The middle-aged protagonist ventures to China, where he embarks on a protracted struggle with the byzantine hospital regulations while dealing with relatives he barely knows. Meanwhile, back in Taiwan, his wife is about to give birth to their second child. Isolated in a foreign country, Lo mulls over his life, dwelling on his difficult relationship with his father and how becoming a father himself has changed him.Faraway is a powerful meditation on the nature of family and the many ways blood can both unite and divide us. Lo’s depiction of family dynamics and fraught politics contains a keen sense of irony and sensitivity to everyday absurdity. He offers a deft portrayal of the rift between China and Taiwan through an intimate view of a father-son relationship that bridges this divide. One of the most celebrated writers in Taiwan, Lo has been greatly influential throughout the Chinese-speaking world, but his work has not previously been translated into English. Jeremy Tiang’s translation captures Lo’s distinctive voice, mordant wit, and nuanced portrayal of Taiwanese culture.

Read more less

In the city of Yong’an, a fiction writer and amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures, with their greenish stomachs or gills or strange birthmarks, live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness, some with ancient forbears, others engineered as artificial breeds.Guided – and often misguided – by her elusive university professor and his scrappy sidekick-student Zhong Liang, our narrator finds herself on a mission to track down each species. And as she blunders from one implausible situation to the next, she comes one step closer to revealing her own multifaceted beastliness…Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China addresses existential questions of identity, being, love and morality with whimsy and grace.

Read more less

Frantz Fanon wrote in 1961 that 'Decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon,' meaning that the violence of colonialism can only be counteracted in kind. As colonial legacies linger today, what are the ways in which we can disentangle literary translation from its roots in imperial violence? 24 writers and translators from across the world share their ideas and practices for disrupting and decolonising translation.“For the past few years, I’ve written and rewritten this line in journals and proposals: literary translation is a tool to make more vivid the relationships between Afro-descendent people in the Americas and around the world.” - Layla Benitez James

Read more less

Where there is murder, there is humanity. Hong Kong's greatest detective, Inspector Kwan, is dying. For the past fifty years he has been quietly solving crimes while the world changed around him. Now on his deathbed, his partner Detective Lok needs help with one final case. Through the story of six different but interlocking murders, this bold and intricate crime novel spans five decades of love, honour, jealousy and revenge, in one of the world's most intriguing nations.

Read more less

In Taiwanese writer Lo Yi-Chin’s Faraway, a fictionalized version of the author finds himself stranded in mainland China attempting to bring his comatose father home. Lo’s father had fled decades ago, abandoning his first family to start a new life in Taiwan. After travel between the two countries becomes politically possible, he returns to visit the son he left behind, only to suffer a stroke. The middle-aged protagonist ventures to China, where he embarks on a protracted struggle with the byzantine hospital regulations while dealing with relatives he barely knows. Meanwhile, back in Taiwan, his wife is about to give birth to their second child. Isolated in a foreign country, Lo mulls over his life, dwelling on his difficult relationship with his father and how becoming a father himself has changed him.Faraway is a powerful meditation on the nature of family and the many ways blood can both unite and divide us. Lo’s depiction of family dynamics and fraught politics contains a keen sense of irony and sensitivity to everyday absurdity. He offers a deft portrayal of the rift between China and Taiwan through an intimate view of a father-son relationship that bridges this divide. One of the most celebrated writers in Taiwan, Lo has been greatly influential throughout the Chinese-speaking world, but his work has not previously been translated into English. Jeremy Tiang’s translation captures Lo’s distinctive voice, mordant wit, and nuanced portrayal of Taiwanese culture.

Read more less