Second session of the Modern Chinese Literature Online Book Club

Join us for the second session of our Modern Chinese Literature Book Club event.  You don't need to have attended the first session - all are welcome!  

Facilitated by Nicky Harman, Emily Jones and Mike Fu - experts in Chinese literature and translation studies, our fun, interactive and informal book club will be run in English and focuses on the English translation.

In this session, we'll introduce you to the story of Hitchhikers (搭车客), by Sanmao (三毛), first published in Stories of the Sahara (translated by Mike Fu, Bloomsbury, 2020). Sanmao was an author, adventurer and pioneer. Born in China in 1943, she moved from Chongqing to Taiwan, Spain to Germany, the Canary Islands to Central America, and, for several years in the 1970s, to the Sahara. Stories of the Sahara invites us into Sanmao's extraordinary life in the desert: her experiences of love and loss, freedom and peril, all told with a voice as spirited as it is timeless.

Access the story in English here and in the original Chinese text here (or you can download it here).   The book club will be held via Zoom and proficiency in Chinese language is not required to join in.

Format for the session:

After an introduction to the author and the story, Nicky, Mike and Emily will lead an interactive discussion with the group focusing on the following questions (questions to think about as you read the story):

1. What is Sanmao’s perspective? Is she a foreigner looking in; a local; or something else?

2. How would you describe the tone of the story?

3. How does Sanmao describe the desert?

4. What does the story tell us about memory and Sanmao’s feelings towards her time in the desert?

5. Sanmao was in the Sahara in the 1970s, nearly half a century ago. As a reader, do you feel that her diaries have a timeless quality, or do they seem to you to be very much of their time?

In our book club discussion, we will chat through these questions and any other comments or questions you have as a group. Please come prepared to share your thoughts on the story and ask questions, either about the story, the author, the translation process or anything else about Chinese literature in translation!

We look forward to seeing you there!  

For further information and to register to attend, please sign up here on Eventbrite.

To read the Chinese version of the event, please click here.

 Or you can view here on WeChat and read the transcript .