Two literary works by Taiwan writers were recently released by Le Pre-Saint-Gervais, France-headquartered publishing company L’Asiatheque, offering French-speaking audiences an in-depth look into the local people and culture, according to the Ministry of Culture April 17.
One of the featured works is “Le Magicien sur la passerelle,” or “The Magician on the Skywalk” in English, a collection of 10 interrelated short stories by burgeoning novelist Wu Ming-yi. Set at the Chunghua Market Bazaar in Taipei City between the 1960s and the 1990s, the novel tells the tale of a magician making a living at the site, the bustling life of the shopping district and its ultimate demolition from the points of view of nine children.
The book is the third work by the 46-year-old published in France, following his two novels “Les lignes de navigation du sommeil” or “Routes in a Dream” in 2012 and “L’Homme aux yeux a facettes,” or “The Man with Compound Eyes” in English in 2014. The latter won the French International Insular Book Award that same year, a first for a Taiwan author.
Wu became the first local writer to be taken on by a major English-language publisher in 2011 when Harvill Secker, a London-based subsidiary of publishing giant Random House, acquired the global English rights to the novel “L’Homme aux yeux a facettes,” which was also translated into Czech and Turkish.
The other addition to the L’Asiatheque publishing list is “Taipei, Histoires au coin de la rue,” a collection of eight essays and short stories that offers readers diverse perspectives on the northern Taiwan metropolis. The anthology features writers such as Chang Wan-kang, Jane Jian, Lin Yao-teh, Walis Nokan and the award-winning Wu.
According to the MOC, the Taiwan fiction section of L’Asiatheque was created in 2015 to promote the country’s contemporary literature. The initiative focuses on works that reflect locals’ views on such issues as colonialism and its impact on collective memory, culture and dialect identity, gender, globalization and the environment.
The first two local books published by L’Asiatheque are “La Cite des douleurs,” the script for 1989’s award-winning movie “A City of Sadness,” and “Membrane,” a science fiction tale by Chi Ta-wei.
Wu and two contributing writers of “Taipei, Histoires au coin de la rue” will take part in a book promotion tour June 1-6 in Paris, Lille, Rennes and Saint Malo arranged by Taiwan Cultural Center in Paris and L’Asiatheque, the MOC said. (SFC-E)
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