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Posted: 18 Sep 2012 08:21 AM PDT

Internet fiction and short stories provide a platform for China's emerging writers to make an impression outside the country.

A POTENT mix of state censorship, conservative publishing choices and scant translation means international readers are given a narrow view of contemporary China, industry critics say.

There are the occasional books by Chinese authors that hit the international bestseller lists such as the blockbuster Wild Swans by Jung Chang, which has sold millions worldwide, and Adeline Yen Mah's Falling Leaves. But both of those authors are based in the West – highlighting the paucity of material from China itself that reaches international markets.

Hong-Kong based Harvey Thomlinson founded Make-Do Publishing in 2009 to produce quality Chinese and Asian literature in English translation, capitalising on Hong Kong's unique position as a multicultural Chinese territory, where freedom of speech laws remain intact.

"You can't underestimate censorship and the impact it has had on the quality of China's literary output," he said.

Chinese fiction also tends to follow a template, according to the British publisher, ignoring the realities of industrialised, modern China, which continues to grow and change at a bewildering pace.

Western imprints pick out only a few genres for translation such as the Cultural Revolution memoir, along with novels by Westernised Chinese authors, who often write originally in English. And economic factors also play a major part in the drive to boost sales.

"Most books have to turn a profit for publishers and this can make editors and their boards quite conservative about their choices," said London-based author and translator Julia Lovell.

"It means they need to look for commercial themes, or books that seem to recapitulate styles and ideas that have worked in the past. Anything new or very literary will, of course, seem a risk."

As well as being an easier sell in the West, such books are also less of a risk for the writers, who are reluctant to tackle current social issues for fear of official repercussions.

In China's big state-run publishing houses "editing is not a profession any more", said Martin Merz, a Hong Kong-based translator. "Now it's more about avoiding political errors."

Make-Do focuses instead on independent authors such as Murong Xuecun and Chen Xiwo, who tend to offer something different from the many government-backed writers in China, who receive stipends and other incentives to encourage them to stay on-side.

Murong's debut book, Leave Me Alone: A Novel Of Chengdu was first published online in 2002, where it attracted several million readers before being released in print. The novel tells the darkly comic story of three young men's attempts to make their way in newly capitalist China, their lives beset by dead-end jobs and gambling debts.

Chen, who was active in the student democracy movements of the 1980s, was also first recognised as an online writer. His controversial novella I Love My Mum, which has incest as a theme and is banned in China, will be published in the United States this month.

Internet fiction and short stories are two increasingly important platforms for emerging young writers in China.

Lovell, who teaches modern Chinese history and literature at Birkbeck College, University of London, said Internet fiction was "enormously popular".

The most prolific Internet writers produce up to 10,000 words a day and Lovell said "fast, cheap, popular genres dominate" online.

The trend has broadened the range of Chinese writing, making it easier for already established authors such as Mo Yan and Yu Hua to deal with issues like sex and drugs more directly than they had done before.

The Internet fiction phenomenon in the country was the result of "a perfect storm of historical and cultural factors coming together at the end of the 1990s", said Thomlinson.

But even with these factors, it is difficult to make an impression outside China. Just 2%-3% of books published annually in Britain and the United States are translations – although their share is slightly higher in non-Anglophone countries such as France and Germany. To grasp the new spirit of China, international readers should turn to short stories, Lovell said.

"Most people have by now woken up to the idea that the politics and economy of China are worth understanding. But familiarity with Chinese culture (especially literature) still lags behind economic and political interest in the country."

However, China's many literary magazines mostly carry short stories and some, such as the recently launched Pathlight and Chutzpah, are published at least partly in English translation.

They showcase young, contemporary Chinese writers who, Lovell said, have "strongly individualistic, personal" approaches and "a determination to illuminate the intense strangeness of the capitalist society that the Chinese Communist party is now building". – AFP

American author Strayed's trek of discovery

Posted: 18 Sep 2012 08:12 AM PDT

But first, she had to lose herself on a solo trek up a trail.

THE idea of a beautiful blonde woman determined to hike over ice, rock and snow for more than 1,000 miles sounds like something you'd only see in movies starring Angelina Jolie. But American author Cheryl Strayed, while certainly good-looking, is no fictional character, and that is exactly what she attempted to do at age 26.

It was the year 1995, four years after her mother's death when Strayed's life began to unravel. Unable to cope with life without her mother, who had been the nucleus of her family, Strayed and her siblings soon scattered, while her own marriage disintegrated from her growing sex addiction. Strayed's life was, to say the least, crumbling into pieces.

In between waiting tables and making out with strangers, Strayed finally decided there was nothing left to lose and made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State, and to do it alone in an effort to rediscover herself.

The only problem? Strayed had no experience as a long-distance hiker. In fact, she'd never even gone backpacking prior to her first night on the trail. Her trek was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise," but it was a promise of putting back together a life that had come undone.

Her travel memoir, Wild: From Lost To Found On The Pacific Crest Trail encapsulates the experience in raw, palpable and often in-your-face verses. Along her journey, Strayed encounters rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls.

Told with great suspense and style, Strayed, who had been just a paper short of finishing her undergraduate degree at the time of the hike, effectively intermingles horror and loneliness, and above all, beauty to an almost comical effect.

The travel memoir vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of a young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened and ultimately healed her. And it is with unbridled furore and brutal honesty that Strayed recounts her struggles and misdeeds along the trail – from her blackened toenails that were fast coming apart to the sexual encounters with the men she meets.

Underlying the grit and grime is a true survivor's tale. For Strayed, losing her mum, who had been a single parent and sole breadwinner of the family, had meant losing the world that she had known.

Strayed's mother was herself a survivor of spousal abuse. By 19, she was pregnant and had married Strayed's father. "Three days later, he knocked her around the room," Strayed writes in the memoir.

"He broke her nose. He broke her dishes. He skinned her knees dragging her down a sidewalk in broad daylight by her hair. But he didn't break her. By 28, she managed to leave him for the last time."

Strayed and her siblings were raised in Minnesota, a Midwestern state in the United States that is best known for its trees and lakes, and had led a spartan lifestyle growing up.

It was spring time when her "vegetarian-ish, garlic-eating, natural-remedy-using nonsmoker" mother died suddenly of lung cancer at the age of 45, a little less than two months after she was diagnosed.

Strayed has described this loss as her "genesis story". To date, she has written about her mother's death and her debilitating grief in each of her books and several of her essays.

Wild: From Lost To Found On The Pacific Crest Trail is no different. Much of the memoir is dedicated to her late mother; in tribute to her love, as well as Strayed's love for her mother.

"The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained.

"It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching's universe and then ten thousand more," she writes.

Cohesively, the travel memoir chronicles the trials and tribulations that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe and in the process, put her together again.

Strayed has since graduated and now holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota. She is also a founding member of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts, and serves on their board of directors.

Wild: From Lost To Found On The Pacific Crest Trail, now a New York Times best-seller will be published in Brazil, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, Israel, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Denmark, France, Norway and Italy.

To top that up, the travel memoir also made Oprah Winfrey's list as the first selection of the all-new Oprah's Book Club 2.0 in June.

Strayed currently resides in Portland, Oregon with her husband, filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, and their two children.

To learn more about the author, log on to cherylstrayed.com.

Ex-Navy SEAL's account of Osama's last moments

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 04:17 PM PDT

A former US Navy SEAL gives a gripping account of the last moments of America's most wanted terrorist.

WHEN US Navy SEALs gunned down Osama bin Laden in his bedroom, it was up to one commando to take photos that would serve as proof of the al-Qaeda leader's bloody demise.

"I started to wipe the blood away from his face using a blanket from the bed. With each swipe, the face became more familiar. He looked younger than I expected.

"His beard was dark, like it had been dyed," the former Navy SEAL, Matt Bissonnette, recalls in his new book, No Easy Day.

His eyewitness account of the raid, which was released on Sept 4, has angered senior officers and drawn a warning of potential legal action from the Pentagon, which says the author revealed classified information.

As for the book, it is a gripping read, even if it often resorts to the macho cliches typical of the genre.

His account also conveys how "Operation Neptune Spear" was fraught with risk and uncertainty, with troops flying deep inside Pakistan without Islamabad's knowledge. But in the end, the raid was all over in a matter of minutes, with no gun battle and little drama.

After an unarmed Osama was shot in the head and then pumped full of bullets, it fell to Bissonnette to take the only photos of the al-Qaeda chief after his death.

"It was strange to see such an infamous face up close. Lying in front of me as the reason we had been fighting for the last decade.

"It was surreal, trying to clean blood off the most wanted man in the world so that I could shoot his photo." After taking pictures of Osama's full body – the images were never released – the commando kneeled down with his camera to capture the man's face.

"Pulling his beard to the right and then the left, I shot several profile pictures. I really wanted to focus on the nose. Because the beard was so dark, the profile shot was the one that really stood out in my mind," he said.

At one point he asks a favour from his fellow commando: "Hey, man, hold his good eye open." To confirm Osama's identity, the SEALs try to get someone in the compound to identify the tall man lying in a pool of blood. A woman refuses, but a girl tells the commandos what they had hoped.

"The girl didn't know to lie," he writes.

Although packed with intriguing anecdotes, the book offers no major revelations that change the fundamental version of events, despite the author's vow to set the record straight. About half of the 313-page book does not even touch on the raid in Abbottabad, barely a few hours' drive from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Instead, the former SEAL describes his upbringing in Alaska where he learned to hunt as a boy, the gruelling training that preceded his joining the elite SEAL "Team Six", other raids in Iraq and Afghanistan and the successful rescue of an American captured by Somali pirates.

He complains that in Afghanistan, the special forces' night-time raids were increasingly hampered by what he deemed bureaucratic red tape.

"It took pages of PowerPoint slides to get a mission approved. Lawyers and staff officers pored over the details on each page, making sure our plan was acceptable to the Afghan government," he wrote.

"Policy-makers were asking us to ignore all of the lessons we had learned, especially the lessons in blood, for political solutions."

In the Osama operation, he describes searching the al-Qaeda leader's bedroom, finding hair dye but no stockpile of bullets.

Above the bedroom door, he finds two guns, "which turned out to be an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol in a holster".

"They were both empty. He hadn't even prepared a defence. He had no intention of fighting," he says, expressing disgust for a man who appears to have relied on others to wage his extremist battles.

He then discovers why Osama's beard was not grey – as intelligence analysts had predicted – finding a bottle of "Just for Men" hair dye in the bathroom. On the flight out of Pakistan, the author focuses on how the crash of one of two helicopters in the operation could have caused havoc with the mission.

"Just more than an hour ago, I thought we were all going to die in a helicopter crash. It was funny, the crash stuck with me a lot longer than getting shot at through the door."

He credits the pilot with a skilful crash landing, but he worries that the team had to leave before their job was finished, having had to rush out without fully searching the compound.

"Part of me felt like we had failed despite the body at my feet," he writes, referring to Osama's corpse on the floor of the chopper.

"We weren't able to get as much intelligence as we could have. We left drawers unopened." – AFP

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Selasa, 18 September 2012

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

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