Life> Reading

True accounts of life's many journeys

By Chitralekha Basu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-05 09:48

The mood is upbeat at the Australian Embassy in Beijing in the run-up to the third edition of the Australian Writers' Week (AWW) in China, due to run in Beijing and Chengdu, from March 8 to 14.

Ambassador Geoff Raby, who kick-started the annual sojourn of some of Australia's most distinguished literary voices to Chinese shores, is visibly delighted with the captivatingly diverse range of authors he will be presenting to a Chinese audience.

Besides appearing at The Bookworm events in Beijing and Chengdu, the writers will interact with young people at Renmin University, Peking University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Xihua University and The National Library of China.

Heading the pack is the septuagenarian Les Murray - the author of 30 books and winner of major international literary awards, such as the TS Eliot Prize for poetry, the Queen's Gold Medal for poetry and the Italian Premio Mondello - unequivocally one of the most influential and revered literary voices in Australia.

At the other end of the spectrum is young Alice Pung, born of Chinese-Cambodian parents and raised in Melbourne, whose book Unpolished Gem about her family's migration from China to Australia - a vivid and sometimes disturbing portrayal of being caught between two cultures - was a national bestseller and won the Australian Book Industry Newcomer Award 2007.

Raby says the theme of AWW this year is "true stories", which is about turning the spotlight on "various authors' accounts of their personal journeys and own life stories, so that we can give readers deeper personal insight into the voice of Australians today, and our society and culture".

Riveting stories about extraordinary lives, as singular as they are typical of Australian society, will not be in short supply.

Robert Dessaix, who writes about discovering his shifty sexual orientation after 12 years of marriage in A Mother's Disgrace, is expected to regale his audience with more tales of confronting personal demons.

Alexis Wright, who is a land rights activist and writes about aboriginal life in Australia, will be talking about her epic novel, Carpentaria, named after the area surrounding the southern gulf, where she is from.

"I am looking forward to meeting Li Yao who is translating Carpentaria for publication in China next year, and also, I will be excited to see the chapters that have been published in the recent edition of Chi Le Chuan, a literary magazine from Inner Mongolia," Wright says.

Translation of Australian literature into Chinese and exploring possibilities of co-publication, have been pivotal to AWW since its inception. More than 60 key publishing groups from across China participated in the publishers' forum last year, meeting leading Australian publishers to talk about developing trade opportunities.

The translation and sale of the children's illustrated book Bollygum to a Chinese distributor, Nan Fang Media Group, and its subsequent distribution to schools in Guangdong province as part of the National Civil Reading program, was one of the happy outcomes of such networking.

"I am keen to know more about contemporary Chinese literature," says Ivor Indyk of Giramondo Press. He is eagerly scouting for interesting and innovative Chinese writers he might publish in English in Australia and will be looking for tips from Chinese editors, translators and publishers in that area.