Today’s Discovery: Some Aussie books and their Chinese editions (@thehammernow @sallyhepworth @dandyrangeslitfest)

Found some screenshots I took a while ago, when I was reviewing a bunch of contemporary Australian books for the 2026 Dandenong Ranges Literary Festival (@dandyrangeslitfest). It is my habit to try to find out whether some of my favourite books already have Chinese editions, either in Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) or Simplified Chinese (China), and what I can learn from the translations themselves. Besides, I always have fun comparing the covers.

The images above are the Traditional Chinese (left) and Australian/English (right) covers of bestselling Australian author Chris Hammer‘s Treasure & Dirt (September 2021), which I reviewed HERE. Note that all of Hammer’s books mentioned in this article have had their Traditional Chinese editions produced by Taiwan’s Ecus Publishing House (@ecusbook). See the “&” in the English title is spelled out as “and” in the Chinese edition (April 2026). Even more interesting is how the book title “Treasure and Dirt” is changed to “Blood and Treasure” in the Chinese edition.

Hammer (@thehammernow) is internationally renowned for his Scrublands series featuring journalist Martin Scarsden. The series has four books as of the writing of this article. Here we see the Traditional Chinese (left) and Australian/English (right) covers of the first book Scrublands (2018). This book was recently voted #73 in ABC Radio National’s public poll for the Top 100 Australian Books of All Time. In the Chinese edition (May 2021), the English title is changed to something like “raging fire in the waste land”.

Here are the Traditional Chinese (left) and Australian/English (right) covers of Silver (2020), the second book in the series. In the Chinese edition (November 2022), the book title is changed to something like “death in the silver harbour”.

Here are the Traditional Chinese (left) and Australian/English (right) covers of Trust (2020), the third book in the series. In the Chinese edition (February 2024), the title is changed to something like “a mystery case in Sydney”.

Meanwhile, Legacy (2025), the fourth and perhaps final book in Hammer’s Scrublands series, is yet to have a Chinese edition. Perhaps the Taiwanese publisher went straight to Treasure & Dirt after Trust, without realising the appearance of Legacy. Hopefully they are working on that book’s Traditional Chinese translation now, not to mention the three books after Treasure & Dirt in the Ivan Lucic & Nell Buchanan series, and not even to mention Hammer’s latest standalone book Full Circle (Simon & Schuster/Summit Books, September 2026)…

To conclude this article, here is a different author. Sally Hepworth (@sallyhepworth) is another bestselling Aussie novelist whose books are super popular across Australia and overseas. Her latest, Mad Mabel (Pan MacMillan Australia, September 2025), which I reviewed HERE, was voted #28 in the aforementioned Top 100 Australian Books of All Time.

As of the writing of this article, among Hepworth’s 10 books, only The Mother-in-Law (October 2020) has had a Traditional Chinese edition. It is also the only one among Hepworth’s six books represented by Andrew Nurnberg Associates International Ltd that has been published in either China or Taiwan.

The images above are the Traditional Chinese (left) and Australian/English (right) covers of Hepworth’s The Mother-in-Law. Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that, while in its Chinese-language archive Andrew Nurnberg has translated the English title merely as what it is, i.e. “The Mother-in-Law”, the Taiwanese publisher somehow changed it to “Autopsy Report” in the Chinese edition, perhaps because the autopsy report of the deceased mother-in-law plays a critically important role in the book.

So that is all for this very long article… One of the things revealed here is how long it takes for a title to be translated (by a human!) and published in another language. Another is, you never know how a title is chosen for translation and how well it will perform in another language/market.