Reading Wanning Sun’s review of Linda Jaivin’s latest book Bombard the headquarters!: The cultural revolution in China (2025) via The Conversation. Jaivin is an excellent translator and novelist, as well as a well-known China expert in Australia. I studied her book The Monkey and the Dragon: A true story about friendship, music, politics and life on the edge (2000), and have always wanted to read her long essay “Found in Translation: In praise of a plural world” (2013) and novel The Empress Lover (2014). Her non-fiction The Shortest History of China (2021) is a recent recommendation from a reader.
But today’s reading is about the following statement from Sun:
“One benchmark for the success of a short book on a ‘devilishly complex’ topic is whether readers are left wanting to know more… Another benchmark for the success of a book dealing with collective traumas with lasting impact is whether readers can still enjoy reading the book, without being overwhelmed by its seriousness.”
In other words, it takes a fair bit of “narrative flair and sense of drama” to turn “human drama such as power struggles and power plays” into a tale that is both disturbing and gripping, and I suppose this applies to both fiction and non-fiction. To do so surely requires talent, but can training help a writer achieve this goal? Aye, the good old “nature vs. nurture” question.
(Day 52 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 