Recent Awards
- Jean Pasley (author of Black Dragonfly), co-writer of the film The Bright Side, won The Audience Award at Cork International Film Festival 2020.
- The 6th Bai Meigui Translation Competition (Sleepy, Sleepy New Year, by Meng Yanan, translated by Izzy Hasson).
- Xu Xiaobin (author of Crystal Wedding and A Classic Tragedy, translated by Nicky Harman and Natascha Bruce) nominated the 2019-2020 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature.
- Natascha Bruce (translator of Lonely Face by Yeng Pway Ngon) received the 3rd prize of John Dryden Translation Competition, and the short-list in 2019-2020 Society of Authors TA First Translation Prize.
- Chia Joo Ming (author of Exile or Pursuit, translated by Sim Wai Chew) received (South East Asia) SEA Write Award, and Singapore Literature Prize 2020.
- Roger Pulvers (author of Half of Each Other, Liv, The Honey and the Fires, The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn, Peaceful Circumstances, My Japan: A Cultural Memoir, The Unmaking of an American and translator of Night on the Milky Way Train by Kenji Miyazawa) awarded 2019 “The Order of Australia” for his significant service to Japanese literature and culture as a writer, translator and educator.
- Frankfurt Book Fair Invitation Programmes 2019.
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)
Bao Bear has never heard of Chinese New Year. He decides to invite the Fox, Mouse, and Bunny families together to learn more about this celebration. However, as the end of autumn nears and Bao Bear gets sleepier, can he stay awake to find out?
(English, with original Chinese text at the end)
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.
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.
(TA First Translation Prize 2019-2020 Shortlist)
New Books
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)
by Crystal Z. Lee
“This heartfelt, transporting story sparkles with a constellation of characters who call this city home while pursuing their China dream. As multifaceted as Shanghai itself, this novel follows overlapping narratives about the complexities of adulting, of parenting, of the urban quest for love and finding one’s place in the world.” —Emily Ting, film director of Go Back to China and Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
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.
Hok Leong only knows one thing about his future: he does not want to become an office boy buying coffee for his superiors. Beyond this, he wants only to roam the streets of Singapore with his rough and tumble gang of boys—that is, until he is assigned to be the Chinese tutor for the new girl that has just moved from Indonesia. From here, Hok Leong begins a path through life guided by a tide all his own. He finds himself brushing serendipitously with academics, and forming romances and friendships that change his world forever. In a heartfelt story of coming of age, we follow Hok Leong through his many encounters with love and change as he grows into a world far larger than he ever imagined it could be. (Singapore Literature Prize 2016, Winner of Southeast Asian Writers Award)
Costume, by Yeng Pway Ngon, Translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang.
“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.
(2016 Singapore Literature Prize)