About the Book
In this issue
we turn a spotlight on the best contemporary writing happening now in Mainland
China.
It's been
a decade since Granta magazine's last major look at East Asia - Granta
127: Japan was a landmark introduced that introduced English-reading audiences
to writers like Sayaka Murata, Hiromi Kawakami, and Mieko Kawakami for the
first time. This new
issue will be an anthology of fiction, non-fiction, photography and poetry,
mostly in translation.
It will
feature new work from established talents, often tipped for the Nobel Prize,
like Yu Hua, Yan Lianke and Can Xue.
It will
also introduce a new generation of writers, like Shuang Xuetao - whose work
recently appeared in the New Yorker, and is known as a leading figure of the
'Dongbei Renaissance', a literary movement known for its combination of gritty
realism with a magical, surrealist turn. We'll also feature new writing by
Zhang Yueran, whose book
Cocoon was published in 2023, alongside writers
who have never before appeared in English.
The issue
aims to look at Chinese writing in the round, and will feature a new science
fiction story from Chen Quifan, author of
Waste Tide - which, from
a futuristic perspective, looks back at catastrophic events through Chinese
history (the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, the colonisation of Hong Kong).
On the
non-fiction side we have Yan Ge writing on the differences between the Chinese
and English languages, and how things like the lack of tenses in Chinese has
led to the development of very distinct cultural tastes in literature. We'll
also have an essay from Han Zhang on migrant workers literature from Picun, and
the uneasy relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and a new wave of
writers emerging from the working class.
