When she first called Zhu Wen, an engineer-turned-avant-garde writer, about the possibility of her translating I Love Dollars, Lovell recalls that Zhu appeared "surprised and perhaps a little suspicious", because he could not believe a person with such a different temperament and background would be interested in his writing.
Zhu is one of the "new generation" writers, most of whom were born in the late 1960s or 1970s and have never been translated into English, except for Wei Hui and Mian Mian, both known for their bold portraits of China's younger generation.
"I love Zhu's work, because of the extraordinary, sarcastic swagger of his first-person narrators," Lovell says.
She finds his subject matter, like that of much contemporary Chinese literature, fairly dark and grim. "But it's lightened by the narrative voice. Without it, the text would risk overwhelming with its pessimism. It is the comic swagger that rescues it."
It is for a similar reason that she relates to Yan Lianke, who is able to narrate a tragedy powerfully but also with a keen sense of absurdity.
"I think Zhu Wen would probably now accept that people from different cultural backgrounds can find common ground through literature," she says. "Literature has an ability to make sometimes surprising connections across societies and cultures."
Lovell admits to the difficulties of publishing translated Chinese literature. In the case of A Dictionary of Maqiao, she could not interest a commercial publisher at first. But after Columbia University Press published it in hardback, commercial publishers bought the rights for the paperback version.
"Once they saw it (the book) worked, they were prepared to take it on. This is one way in which Chinese literature can enter the publishing mainstream."
At the moment, Lovell is finishing a book on the first Opium War (1840-42). Her next translation might be an abridged version of the classic Journey to the West.
(Source: China Daily)
