Author Liu Zhenyun: Alone Among Wolves
Liu Zhenyun, Tilman Spengler: Merciless sense of humour (Photo: Alexis Malefakis)
8 October 2009
A chef gets tangled up in political machinations and risks his life. In the novel I Am Liu Yuejin by the successful Chinese writer Liu Zhenyun, a humble citizen gets caught up with Beijing’s powerful elite. A reading in Munich offered a literary foretaste of the Goethe-Institut’s programme at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The best-selling Chinese author Liu Zhenyun read to a full house on 4 October at the Munich Goethe-Institut. Liu came on the invitation of the Deutsch-Chinesischen Kulturnetz and the Confucius Class Munich. In his homeland of China, Liu is already one of the most successful contemporary writers; his books are printed by the millions and even adapted for television. In Germany, so far only the novel I Am Liu Yuejin (Wo Jiao Liu Yuejin) has been published under the title Taschendiebe. It tells a social fable of his adopted city of Beijing. Author and China expert Tilman Spengler spoke with Liu Zhenyun after the reading about his novel and his unique trademark: humour.
Deutsch-Chinesisches Kulturnetz
“The brilliant literary aspect of the book is the theme of a lie that is exposed through another lie,” said Tilman Spengler about I Am Liu Yuejin. At a large construction site in Beijing a simple itinerant cook named Liu Yuejin finds a bag of volatile documents that could be the undoing of the city’s important officials. This find brings him in danger and makes him “a lamb among wolves,” summarizes the author. Yet Liu inverts the parable of power: it is not the wolves that maul the lamb, but the lamb whose skilled tactics corner the political elite – driving some even to suicide. The People’s Republic seen as a construction site and an itinerant worker who defeats the state – isn’t this a target of censorship? Author Liu explains that his radically black humour often keeps the government censors from intervening in his works.
He grew up with this kind of humour. “In my home province of Henan, merciless irony is part of the people’s good tone,” said Liu. He was born in Henan in 1958, the year that Mao Zedong began his policy of the “Great Leap Forward” with the aim to make China a major economic power. Tilman Spengler emphasizes that Liu awakens associations to this rather dark chapter of China’s history with his novel I Am Liu Yuejin: the first name of the protagonist Yuejin means “a leap forward” in Chinese. “This association is lost in the translation of the title,” Liu explains. Yet usually his books gain through their translations – at least in size. The Korean, English or German versions of his novels are often twice as thick as the Chinese original. “This is evidence of the concision and succinctness of the Chinese language,” the author adds.
The Goethe-Institut at the Frankfurt Book Fair: The Complete Programme
Find out more about Liu Zhenyun’s work and his adopted city of Beijing at the Goethe-Institut’s City Talk at the Frankfurt Book Fair. On 16 October the Chinese writer will talk with German author Martin Mosebach about what Chinese and German cities have in common and what makes them different. The series City Talk: Chinese Authors in German Cities – German Authors in Chinese Cities is part of the extensive programme of the Goethe-Institut at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
