John Updike reviews two new novels from China, in The New Yorker:
American translation of contemporary Chinese fiction appears to be the lonely province of one man, Howard Goldblatt, the founding editor of Modern Chinese Literature and a professor currently at the University of Notre Dame. Goldblatt’s midwifery has recently given us two novels by mainland authors: “My Life as Emperor,” by Su Tong (Hyperion East; $24.95), and “Big Breasts & Wide Hips,” by Mo Yan (Arcade; $27). Mo Yan’s “Red Sorghum,” which Goldblatt translated in 1993, won considerable notice and the hopeful remark from the Chinese-American author Amy Tan that “Mo Yan’s voice will find its way into the heart of the American reader, just as Kundera and García Márquez have.” Well, that’s a tough old heart, and I’m not sure the Chinese are ready to crack it yet.
More here.