Deer Park by Han Dong
Posted by Nicky Harman on 19/1/12
Han Dong
Steve Wasserman reads Deer Park, a short story by Chinese author Han Dong, translated into English by Nicky Harman
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
As part of the Free Word Translator Residency we ran a Bookclub Fest where I was approached by Steve Wasserman of the Short Story Bookclub asking for a story by Chinese novelist and poet Han Dong. The long and the short of it is that I provided The Deer Park and he recorded it. I was over the moon when I listened. The story seems to acquire a whole new life of its own as it’s being read alive. The Short Story Bookclub website provides all sorts of podcast stories for free. I very much like the idea, as a great alternative to printed short story collections.
An expanded version of this story first appeared in Odyssey: Architecture and Literature edited by Ou Ning, produced for the 2009 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism.
Born in 1961 in Nanjing, Han Dong's parents were banished to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, taking him with them. When the Cultural Revolution ended, he studied philosophy at Shandong University, graduating in 1982. He subsequently lectured in Xi'an and Nanjing, finally relinquishing teaching in 1993 to make his living as a writer. Han is a major player on the modern Chinese literary scene – he is an important avant-garde poet, and is increasingly well-known as an essayist, short story writer, blogger and novelist. He has made four literary tours in the West: Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, Holland, 2006; China-Europa Forum, Paris and Brussels, 2007; and London and Edinburgh, Arts Council England-funded solo tour, 2009, and Goettingen, Germany, 2011. His first novel, 《扎根》, was translated as Banished! (UHP, 2009) and long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize.
Nicky Harman is a Chinese-to-English translator, and teaches translation at Imperial College London. She has translated literary fiction, poetry and non-fiction, including Banished! by Han Dong, which won a PEN Translation Fund Award and was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. She has been Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre for Translation at Chinese University Hong Kong, April 2006, and Visiting Scholar at Fudan and Beijing Universities, China, 2008.
Steve Wasserman runs the Short Story Book Club, a London-based group who love reading and talking about short stories. He is currently "recruiting" for his Read Me Something You Love podcast.
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