Recent Awards

Sleepy, Sleepy New Year, story and illustrations by Meng Yanan (Bronze and Sunflower Picture Book Award), translated by Izzy Hasson (Winner of the 6th Bai Meigui Translation Competition)

The Enchanted Bells: Marco Picollo’s musical adventure by April Chung

The Charter: And Thirteen Other Stories about Japan, by Roger Pulvers

The Chilli Bean Paste Clan, by Yan Ge, translated by Nicky Harman (Winner of English PEN Translates Award)

“If you’re like me, the first thing you did before the bookshops got locked down was acquire an additional stack of tsundoku to hopelessly work your way through until society collectively got-well-soon again. The best thing I’ve come across so far is Yan Ge’s The Chilli Bean Paste Clan (pub. May 2018). Ge, an already prolific author from Sichuan, is just starting to see her work introduced into the English-speaking world in earnest. She published White Horse, a relatively slight novella, in 2014, and The Chilli Bean Paste Clan in 2018. She has a highly anticipated forthcoming novel—The Strange Beasts of China—coming out later this year. …” (Book Review by Geoffrey Waring)

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ChilliBeanPasteClan/

Lonely Face, by Yeng Pway Ngon, Translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce. (TA First Translation Prize 2019-2020 Shortlist)

Singapore, late 1980s. As women gain power and independence, what’s an insecure guy to do? Lonely Face is the story of a man on the cusp of middle age, left behind by changing times. Fleeing his crumbling marriage on an overnight bus to Genting Highlands, he tries his luck at slot machines rather than the vagaries of modern romance. This snapshot of a society in flux is a newly-translated early work by acclaimed novelist Yeng Pway Ngon, Cultural Medallion recipient and three-time winner of the Singapore Literature Prize.

Costume,  by Yeng Pway Ngon, Translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang. (Singapore Literature Prize)

“Helpless before the heavens we part, what sorrow, what rage; the farewell heart clings to the drooping willow, goodbye tears splash the flowers—The old man struggles to remember the lyrics to Revisiting the Long Pavilion Willows, humming bits and pieces. It’s been too long since he’s sung anything, too long since he heard this tune…” Read the excerpt from Words Without Borders.

New Books

More than One Child — Memoirs of an illegal daughter by Shen Yang, translated by Nicky Harman (September 2021)

‘This is the voice of China’s Invisible Generation – vividly written, well balanced, brilliant, humorous and very sharp – it elicits a rollercoaster of emotions that breaks through the silence shrouding the lives of excess children born during the One-Child Policy.’ ––Xinran (Author of The Good Women of China) (Featured in The Guardian Books: Going places: The international authors to read this summer July 2021)

Sound of the Soil by Chuden Kabimo, translated from the Nepali by Ajit Baral (October 2021)

Flowers of Lhasa by Tsering Yangkyi, translated from the Tibetan by Christopher Peacock (November 2021)

Poems 2020, Translation from Russian, Polish and Japanese, Notes and Commentary by Roger Pulvers

The year 2020 was the year the world turned inward. We may have stayed at home, but this was a time to look deeply inside ourselves to find connections that we carry in us with all people all around the world.

The poets appearing here describe not only affairs of the heart but also upheaval and revolution, exile and betrayal, and encounters and events that are often brimming with hilarity and wit, proving without a doubt that poetry is the lifeblood of a nation.

Black Dragonfly by Jean Pasley

“A lavish, beautiful testimony to the life and achievements of Lafcadio Hearn, the writer who opened our eyes to Japan’s intricate, extraordinary art and literature, and to its rituals, sometimes exquisite, sometimes scarifying, always uniquely the country’s own. Pasley is a true writer, and Black Dragonfly a book to read and remember.” — Frank McGuinness (Playwright)

A Classic Tragedy: Short Stories, by Xu Xiaobin, translated by Natascha Bruce and Nicky Harman

Wholly Esenin: Poems by Sergei Esenin, Translated from the Russian, Notes and Commentary by Roger Pulvers.

Exile or Pursuit,  by Chia Joo Ming, Translated from the Chinese by Sim Wai Chew. (Singapore Literature Prize 2016, Winner of Southeast Asian Writers Award)

The Archaeology of a Dream City, by Monica Raszewski

Love and Other Moods, by Crystal Z. Lee

The Pidgin Warrior, by Zhang Tianyi, translated by David Hull

“Satiric brilliance and unusual comic verve.” — C. T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction

In the 1930s, wartime Shanghai is a cosmopolitan metropolis where conmen and dance-hall girls mingle with refugees streaming in from the occupied areas. One of those refugees is Shi Zhaochang.  Having read too many gongfu novels, he is convinced that only an elite martial artist with magical powers can save China.  He flees to Shanghai on a quixotic search for a gongfu master who can teach him the secret techniques that will make himself that warrior.  The fate of China itself hangs in the balance, and everyone has a scheme to save the nation, or at least get rich trying.

The Pidgin Warrior is a rollicking satire of nationalism and modernity that is remarkably relevant today.