Hua portrait

Yu Hua

Date: Monday, November 14, 2011
Place: Procrastinator Theater
Time: 4 p.m.

Title: A Writers’ China

Sponsoring department: Modern Languages & Literatures

This talk is co-sponsored by the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana in Missoula, and the MSU Department of History and Philosophy.

Summary:

“I write of China’s pain, I am registering my pain too, because China’s pain is mine," said Yu Hua. During this talk, Yu Hua is going to share with audience his observation, analysis and personal anecdotes about contemporary China. He will also talk about his new book China in Ten Words. Professor Alan H. Barr, who has translated many of Yu Hua’s books, will also be there to translate for Yu Hua. A book signing will follow.

About the speaker:

Now one of China’s best-known novelists, Yu Hua was born in Haiyan, Zhejiang province in 1960, and grew up in and around a hospital where his parents were both doctors. His education was encompassed almost entirely by the Cultural Revolution, following which he was assigned to a job as a dentist. Five years later he published his first short story in a Beijing literary magazine, and shortly thereafter moved to a job in the provincial level cultural bureau. Yu Hua was one of the generations of writers who began reconstructing modern Chinese literature in the 1980s, and in the 1990s began publishing a series of spare, simple, carefully-drawn novels. His latest work, Brothers, an ambitious tapestry of two eras of Chinese literature, represents a departure in style, length and subject matter from his previous work. Before Brothers, he has published three full-length novels, Cries in the Drizzle, To Live, and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant. His novels have all been translated into English and other languages. His essay collection, China in Ten Words, will be published in early November 2011 by Pantheon House.

  • Yu Hua’s works in English:
  • To Live: A Novel. Anchor (August 26, 2003)
  • Chronicle of a Blood Merchant. Anchor (November 9, 2004)
  • Brothers: A Novel. Anchor (January 12, 2010)
  • Cries in the Drizzle. Anchor (October 9, 2007)
  • China in Ten Words. Pantheon (November 8, 2011)