Can Xue

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Can Xue , Chinese  残雪 (* 1953 in Changsha as Deng Xiaohua , Chinese  邓小华 , Pinyin Cán Xuě ), is the pseudonym of a Chinese author of experimental literature. Translated, the pseudonym has a double meaning: It can denote dirty snow that does not melt, but also the particularly clean snow on a mountain peak. Can Xue is considered one of the most important experimental authors in the world and was named by Susan Sontag as China's most promising candidate for a Nobel Prize . She is considered to be the only woman who has been able to establish herself in the avant-garde literature business in China (which includes Mo Yan , Yu Hua and Su Tong , among others ).

life and work

Can Xue grew up in Changsha and lived there until she moved to Beijing in 2001. Her parents were forced to work in rural areas by the Chinese communist regime during the Great Leap and again during the Chinese Cultural Revolution after her father was condemned as right-wing extremist. With this in mind, Can Xue only received basic schooling. Inspired by her father, she occupied herself with reading, especially with Western and Russian literature. During the 1970s , Can Xue was an unskilled worker in a medical station and factory in Changsha. In 1978 she married and had a son in 1979. Her parents were rehabilitated in the same year. In 1981, Can Xue temporarily taught English at a high school. In 1982 she and her husband opened a tailor's shop .

In the following years Can Xue took up her own writing. In 1987 her first works were published: a collection of novels in book form in Taiwan and a single novella in Bell Mountain magazine . In the following years she published more books in Shanghai and Japan. In 1989, Dialogues in Paradise was the first translation of one of her works to appear in the western world. Further international publications followed. In 1992, Xan Cue was invited to the United States by the University of Iowa as part of an International Writing Program . In addition to other purely fictional texts, Can Xue began writing literary studies in the 1990s . She dealt intensively with Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges , among others . In the 2000s she made comments on classical greats in Western literature, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller and Dante Alighieri .

Awards

Publications (selection)

Translations into English

  • Dialogues in Paradise , translated by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang (1989)
  • Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas , translated by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang (1991)
  • The Embroidered Shoes , translated by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang (1997)
  • Blue Light in the Sky and Other Stories , translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (2006)
  • Five Spice Street , novel, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (2009)
  • Vertical Motion , translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping (2011)
  • The Last Lover , translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (2014)

Translations into German

  • Dialogues in Paradise: Tales from the People's Republic of China , translated by Wolf Baus, edited by Charlotte Dunsing and Tienchi Martin-Liao, Projekt Verlag, Dortmund 1996, ISBN 3-928861-67-0

Web links

  • Can Xue. Retrieved July 10, 2016 .
  • Can Xue: my life. Retrieved July 10, 2016 (Chinese, Can Xue's blog).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Can Xue Home. Massachusetts Institute of Technology , accessed June 5, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Interview with Laura McCandlish: Stubbornly Illuminating “the Dirty Snow that Refuses to Melt”: A Conversation with Can Xue. Ohio State University , 2002, accessed July 10, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Can Xue Biography. Massachusetts Institute of Technology , accessed June 5, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Can Xue Chronology. Massachusetts Institute of Technology , accessed June 5, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Chad Post: BTBA 2015 Winners: Can Xue and Rocío Cerón! University of Rochester , May 27, 2015, accessed May 28, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Can Xue
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Deng Xiaohua
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese author
DATE OF BIRTH 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Changsha