"Literature is a bridge connecting the East and the West, and you can get access to a country through its literature."
So says Sun Qian, vice president of Phoenix Art and Literature Publishing, at the 2023 London Book Fair. It's the first time she and her team have returned to the event since the COVID-19 pandemic – and they have returned with new books.
Hope and Life, a novel by Chinese writer Hu Xuewen published in Chinese by Phoenix, was launched in English on Tuesday, the same day the London Book Fair opened. The English version was translated by Joel Batchler, and published by the New Classic Press.
It's a novel based in rural life literature, a genre which can be traced back to the 1920s and was particularly popular during the 1940s to 1950s. However, Hu's novel, centered upon a dying midwife who has delivered around 12,000 babies, has something new.
The midwife, Qiao Damei, is treated as a goddess figure in the village where she spent her whole life, because she is the one that delivered generations of people over the past 100 years from the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) to modern times.
As she lies on her deathbed, people in the village still come to her – for conversation, confession and company. The timespan of the narrative happens within 24 hours, but through flashbacks, tells a 100-year history from the midwife's perspective.
It's a sweeping narrative and an ambitious project – a 600,000-word novel depicting the rural life of China over an entire, dramatic century. The unavoidable question is whether it is too challenging for Western readers, but Hu seems to be not worried at all – noting that rural novels have long been a part of global literature.
"For novels depicting the rural life, there is always something in common aside from the personalities of different authors," says Hu. "They can happen in different regions, have different cultural concepts, but they must be about emotions and spirits of the individuals."
Readers will always echo with the emotions and spirits that are shared in all humanity.
Nicky Harman, a prize-winning translator and writer, has worked since the 1990s to translate Chinese books into English. She tells CGTN Europe she enjoys the experience of bringing what she can read in Chinese to the readers in English.
"I think good literature travels," says Harman. "So it doesn't matter what the books are about. If it is well written, they'll travel."
In recent years Harman has seen the great success created by sci-fi novelist Liu Cixin and has translated several books written by Jia Pingwa, as well as children's books. To her, translation is the bridge that connects different cultures.
Chinese publisher Sun Qian is also full of optimism. For one thing, she tells CGTN she can't wait to take a walk in the British countryside again. And furthermore, she hopes the novel might inspire a return journey.
"I'm a great fan of Charles Dickens, and I used to travel in the countryside of the UK with a novel by Dickens," she says. "Maybe one day, there will be English readers in the Chinese countryside, with a copy of Hope and Life in their hands, just for a look at the village where Granny lived."
Reporter: Li Jianhua
Video editing: Ai Yan and Li Ningning
Camera: Steve Ager