‘The final cut – the coup de grace – entered Qian’s heart, from which black blood the colour and consistency of melted malt sugar slid down the knife blade'

In the eighty fifth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are experiencing the lacerating pains of Sandalwood Death, as dealt to us by Nobel literature prizewinner Mo Yan. It’s time to rip Shandong Province apart in a rebellion for the songbooks. Weapon in hand, the Sun Wukong to my Yue Fei is translator Stefan Rusinov. We laugh, we brood, we hallucinate, and we shake our fists at the craven villain Yuan Shikai, all the while pondering: is torture an artform?

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// NEWS ITEMS //

A Record of My Battle with the Virus by Han Song, translated by Michael Berry
Xi Xi: Can We Say // a special issue on the recently late writer
Gu Long’s Blood Parrot, translated by Deathblade
SCMP takes a look at the new prequel to The Wandering Earth

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(喵 – miāo – meow)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Gao Xingjian - another Han nobel lit prize winner
Mo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Jiaozhou, Imperial Germany’s Shandong colony
Stefan’s previous TrChFic appearance, discussing Can Xue

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// Handy TrChFic Links //

Help Support TrChFic // Episode Transcripts

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Ep 85 - Mo Yan and Sandalwood Death with Stefan Rusinov

The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast

Ep 85 - Mo Yan and Sandalwood Death with Stefan Rusinov