Book talk and signing with author Hon Lai Chu and Translator Jacqueline Leung.
About the book:
Translated from Chinese by Jacqueline Leung
For readers of Ling Ma and Sayaka Murata, Hon Lai Chu’s dystopian exploration of body autonomy, relationships, and late capitalism defies and then reassembles dark realities.
In a failing city, a government program incentivizes couples to “conjoin”—surgically attach themselves to one another—promising a flourishing economy, ecological revitalization, and personal fulfillment. A student writing her dissertation on the program’s history begins to suffer from insomnia. As her world unravels and under the weight of expectations by both society and her close friends, she worries that maybe they are all right when they tell her it would be better—for the good of another person and for the good of the country—to sacrifice everything that she is and get conjoined. Mending Bodies blends body horror and political allegory to explore a world where even the motives of those you love most are shaped by larger forces.
About the author:
Dubbed “the most outstanding young authors in Hong Kong,” Hon Lai Chu writes award-winning, Kafkaesque tales of life in a hypermodern dystopia. Written with precision and economy, these surrealistic stories’ sense of malaise is both specific and universal.
About the translator:
Jacqueline Leung is a writer and translator from Hong Kong. Her work has appeared in Wasafiri, Transtext(e)s Transcultures, Gulf Coast, Asymptote, Nashville Review, SAND Journal, the Asian Review of Books, Books From Taiwan, and elsewhere. She is a translator editor at The Offing. Her excerpt of Mending Bodies is a winner of PEN Presents by the English PEN. This is her first full-length translation.
About the publisher:
Two Lines Press is an award-winning press committed to publishing daring and original literature in translation in striking editions.
The Center for the Art of Translation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, was founded in 2000 by Olivia Sears, an Italian translator and editor who serves as the Center’s board president. In 1993, prior to forming the Center, Sears helped to establish the literary translation journal Two Lines: World Writing in Translation at a time when there were very few venues for translated literature in English, and those handful rarely paid much attention to the translator beyond a brief acknowledgment. Two Lines set out to challenge that trend—to make international literature more accessible to English-speaking audiences, to champion the unsung work of translators, and to create a forum for translators to discuss their craft. In this way, Two Lines serves as the Center’s cornerstone, and the journal’s spirit radiates through all of the Center’s work today.
Lily Meyer will moderate a conversation between the author and translator.
Lily Meyer is a translator, critic, and author of the novel Short War. A contributing writer at the Atlantic, her novel The End of Romance is forthcoming from Viking.
Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Please contact events@lostcitybookstore.com with questions.
Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar events@lostcitybookstore.com con cualquiera duda.