Okay, I'm a bit late with this .. but then most of you probably already knew and had celebrated that Yan Lianke receives Twitter Literary Prize.
No ? Still ... an intriguing headline, right ? I kept my fingers crossed that at least it was an award for 'tweeted' fiction. Alas, not even that, apparently -- it seems to be this (and this), and Yan Lianke's Lenin's Kisses was the top vote-getter in the international category of this Japanese prize. Of a very limited number of votes -- thirty-four was enough to win: see the full run-down here. (It is an interesting list -- with Brian Evenson's Fugue State seventh (with sixteen votes) -- but not too many folks seem to have played along.)
Okay, so this is not an award that can/should be taken too seriously. The China Daily article doesn't even bother trying to find the title the novel was published under in English, referring to it as The Joy of Living (but it is, indeed, Lenin's Kisses). But the article does provide some additional interesting information, claiming the Japanese edition of the winning title was:
We're still waiting for the big Chinese breakthrough in the English-speaking world, but I'm surprised that closer to home success seems also to have been limited, so far.
Meanwhile, Yan's novel The Four Books has just come out in English; see the publicity pages from Grove Press and Chatto & Windus, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. I haven't seen it yet, but I'll probably have a look; I wonder whether it will sell more than 20,000 copies in the US/UK. Or Japan.
No ? Still ... an intriguing headline, right ? I kept my fingers crossed that at least it was an award for 'tweeted' fiction. Alas, not even that, apparently -- it seems to be this (and this), and Yan Lianke's Lenin's Kisses was the top vote-getter in the international category of this Japanese prize. Of a very limited number of votes -- thirty-four was enough to win: see the full run-down here. (It is an interesting list -- with Brian Evenson's Fugue State seventh (with sixteen votes) -- but not too many folks seem to have played along.)
Okay, so this is not an award that can/should be taken too seriously. The China Daily article doesn't even bother trying to find the title the novel was published under in English, referring to it as The Joy of Living (but it is, indeed, Lenin's Kisses). But the article does provide some additional interesting information, claiming the Japanese edition of the winning title was:
published at the end of last year with a first run of 8,000 copies, which immediately sold out. As of right now, the book has been reprinted three times, with each run consisting of 3,000 copies.That's not bad -- probably more than it's sold in English. But the article claims that those numbers mean the novel: "has broken all records of sales of Chinese writers' works". So the bestselling Chinese work in nearby Japan has sold ... less than 20,000 copies ?
We're still waiting for the big Chinese breakthrough in the English-speaking world, but I'm surprised that closer to home success seems also to have been limited, so far.
Meanwhile, Yan's novel The Four Books has just come out in English; see the publicity pages from Grove Press and Chatto & Windus, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. I haven't seen it yet, but I'll probably have a look; I wonder whether it will sell more than 20,000 copies in the US/UK. Or Japan.