Between the Lines: Conversations with Chinese Writers: China and Overseas

Renowned Chinese film scholar Raymond Barr began interviewing creative professionals across a wide range of fields in the early 2000s, ranging from directors and writers to musicians and artists. Over the past two decades, his work has amassed a vast oral history of Chinese culture. "Raymond Barr Interviews" is a collection of the essence extracted from these interviews.

Following the previous volumes of conversations with Jia Zhangke, Cui Zien and various Chinese-language filmmakers, "Between the Lines: Conversations with Chinese Writers" collects conversations between Bai Ruiwen and Chinese writers. Due to the rich content of the interviews, it is divided into two parts: "Between the Lines: Conversations with Chinese Writers - China and Overseas Volume" and "Between the Lines: Conversations with Chinese Writers - Taiwan Volume", which include three series of twenty interview records, "Realism and Magic in Chinese Literature", "International Perspectives on Chinese Creation" and "Island Conversations", which together form the fourth and fifth volumes of "Bai Ruiwen Interviews". Interviewees for the "China and Overseas Volume" include Yan Lianke, Wang Anyi, Fang Fang, Mai Jia, Liu Cixin, Han Song, Gao Xingjian, Ha Jin, Zhang Ling, Hong Ying, Xue Yishi, and Lu Xinhua.

Through in-depth interviews, readers can follow the authors' journeys of reading and writing, understand the source of their unbridled imaginations, and hear the secrets never revealed in their works. The conversations collected in this book are not concentrated but scattered. The writers interviewed come from different places and represent different generations. Their works also present different perspectives and genres, including political fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, postmodern fiction, documentary literature, suspense fiction, etc., and they also include distinct literary perspectives. However, taken together, they are enough to witness the diversity and cacophony of Chinese writers.

Features of this book

"Between the Lines reveals the author's comprehensive grasp of the context of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, her deep listening and reading of the writers and their works, and her sympathetic understanding of them, their works, and the contexts in which they exist. This is truly astonishing." — David Wang (Academician of the Academia Sinica, scholar of comparative literature and literary criticism)

Recommended by all walks of life

Wang Dewei (Academician of the Academia Sinica, scholar of comparative literature and literary criticism)

2025-05-20

釀出版

278

9786264120845