The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast Angus Stewart

In the seventy sixth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are hitting Zero (零 / líng). Joining me on deck are The Hugonauts, as we navigate a dystopian world that might be a postmodern riff on 1984 by amorphous author Huang Fan, or might be something far more sinister. All seasoned rebels know: sometimes you crash the system, and sometimes the system crashes you.

In the seventy fifth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are surviving The Curse (杨村的一则诅咒 / yáng cūn de yī zé zǔzhòu). Investigating on the scene is literary Sinologist Jeffrey Kinkley. Is this a tale of a backfiring curse, or a backfiring society? For realist writing to penetrate our often nightmarish world and scratch The Real, does it have to get weird first? Detective K and I are on the case. Don’t expect comforting answers.

In the seventy fourth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are dallying with The Fox Spirit of Bluestone Mountain (狐狸緣全傳 / yúlí yuán quánchuán). Arriving just in time to save us from the spirit’s wiles is translator Timothy Gouldthorp. Straighten your tails, grab a Taoist 不可以色色 bonk stick, and line up for battle as the creatures of the forest (rabbits included) take on the gods!

In the seventy third episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, Eero Suoranta and I are saying Farewell, Doraemon (再见，哆啦A梦 / zàijiàn, duōlaAmèng). This is the second time a story by A Que has appeared on the show, and I feel that I now know the writer’s soul: tender in spirit, thoughtful in action, of limpid and eerie atmosphere, and shy about everything except postmodern intertextual showmanship. Pass with us through a loop in time hidden in a lonely river to drown in nostalgia (from the Greek nostos ‘return home’ + algos ‘pain’).

In the seventy second episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast I’m facing down a bleak reality: My Country Does Not Dream (韩松 我的祖国不要做梦 / wǒde zǔguó bù zuò mèng). But I’m not doing it alone! The London Chinese Science Fiction Group have deployed a team of Han Song aficionados (and one critic) to console my exhausted brain as the daytime hours fall away, revealing a sombre somnambulant city behind the city: Beijing.

In the seventy first episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are stepping into A Looking Glass World (单筒望远镜 / Dāntǒng Wàngyuǎnjìng). This is our second encounter with Tianjin’s bard Feng Jicai, and our first (sort of!) with his publisher-in-translation, Daniel Li of Sinoist Books.