Books from Taiwan completed its first back-to-back book fair trip to Bangkok (March 29-31) and Bologna (April 3-6). We were delighted to witness the Taiwan Pavilion made its comeback to the Bangkok International Book Fair after ten years, and to give a presentation on BFT’s main task and the translation fund program to a group of Thailand publishers on March 31.
The fifth issue of BFT’s catalogue is hot off the press! In this biannual publication, we feature a select list of works, ranging from fiction and non-fiction titles, children’s books and comics.
Adults & Children’s Books
Hometown at Dusk by Roan Ching-Yueh
Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong by Ma Ka-Fai
Burning Bright by Cheng Ying-Shu
Aaron the Fox by Wang Mei-Hui & Chen Pin-Rui
Little Things I, II by Jay Yeh, Bei Lynn, Tsui Li-Chun, Yang Li-Ling, Chien Yin, Tai Pera, Yu Chia-Chi, Ho Yun-Tzu, Claire Cheng, Tsai Chia-Hua, Li Yi-Ting
The Squirrel and the Banyan Tree by Zhou Jian-Xin
Silhouettes by Sun Hsin-Yu
Adventure at Night by Liao Shu-Ti
I Want Some! and Do You Want Some? by Huang Yu-Chin & Tsao Juei-Chih
Comics
Rites of Returning by Zuo Hsuan
The Taming of the Warrior by You Gui-Xiu
Scroll of a Northern City II by AKRU
Oldman by Chang-Sheng; Big City, Little Things by HOM
Son of the Sea by Chen Jian; Oh, My Goddess! by Chiyou
The Baker’s Journey by Chen Wen-Sheng; Remote Island by Adoor Yeh
Bonjour Angoulême! by Au Yao-Hsing
For March we recommend you the award-winning novel Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong, an underworld story blended with forbidden love affairs set in a unique time and place in history.
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Ma Ka-Fai Category: Literary/Crime Publisher: Thinkingdom Date: 6/2016 Pages: 344 Length: 180,000 characters (approx. 110,000 words in English) |
Winner of 2017 Taipei Book Fair Award
Luk Pa-Choi runs to Hong Kong to escape poverty, brutality, and sexual abuse, having no idea that a future just as treacherous awaits him there. The young man begins by pulling a rickshaw and working as a bouncer in brothels, but fate pulls him deeper into the world of the Chinese criminal underground, and he begins to establish himself as a gangster. Yet he has a lover of no small significance – Morris Davidson, an officer in the British police force in Hong Kong. The two feed each other information, and provide each other comfort.
Yet when the Japanese army takes over Hong Kong, and British officers are thrown in jail, Luk Pa-Choi must learn to deal with this new enemy. As his situation becomes more dangerous, Luk faces betrayal and the bitter price of love as he tries his best to rescue Davidson.
Set in the tumultuous period of WWII and Japanese occupation, Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong tells the story of a young Chinese gangster’s dramatic rise in Hong Kong’s underworld and his forbidden love affair with a British police officer. Meticulously researched and artfully told, it is at once a crime epic, a heart-wrenching love story, and a sex-charged spy thriller.
Download English Sample here.
The 2017 Taipei Book Fair (Feb 8 to 13) no doubt is the most vibrant ever. More independent publishers attended as exhibitors with brilliant stand designs. More publishers made efforts to connect with their readers by dedicating spaces for hosting book events, rather than making sales. Certainly BFT was there too! Check out our collage of photos and read more on Publishers Weekly.
Taking the Pulse of Taiwan's Book Market
Children's Titles, Especially Translations, Are Big Deals
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First published on June 28, 2016, United Daily News
David Der-Wei Wang, Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard, makes a statement on behalf of the judges.
There were six finalists for the third annual UDN Grand Literary Award, including poets, essayists and novelists, all outstanding representatives of contemporary Taiwan literature who have won our respect and esteem. After detailed discussions, we, the judges, have decided to award the prize to Wu Ming-Yi.
Wu Ming-Yi began writing Nativist short stories – stories about a rural way of life that was passing away – in the early 1990s, but he really made his mark after the turn of the new millennium with several collections of nature writing: Book of Lost Butterflies (2000), about the decline of butterfly populations in Taiwan over the twentieth century; Butterfly Way (2003), about the multigenerational journeys on which certain species of butterfly still embark today; So Much Water So Close to Home (2007), an homage to Raymond Carver about an epic seaside hike down Taiwan’s East Coast, and Flame Above Flame (2014), a meditation on photography, in which Wu Ming-Yi follows in Roman Vishniac’s footsteps around the old neighborhood of Báng-kah. In these works, Wu Ming-Yi appeals to the environmental ethos of his era, but also reveals a fiercely intellectual streak and resolutely empirical spirit. With the addition of a magical realism to his creative palette, Wu created a style all his own in two novels. First, in Dreamliner (2007), a narcolept follows in his father’s footsteps from Taiwan to Japan at the height of the Pacific War to manufacture fighter props. Second, in The Man With the Compound Eyes (2011), a million eyes watch as a floating trash mountain crashes upon Taiwan’s eastern shore.
The Magician on the Skywalk (2011) is a collection of nine tales of bildungsroman set in the Chung Hwa Market, where the narrator (and the author) grew up. The market, which was demolished in 1992, and returns to life in these pages, is a habitat for hundreds – small shop owners, diners, families – from all walks of life. It is also a den of thieves, in which each protagonist gets his first bittersweet taste of life. When, later in life, the protagonists look back on their time there, they remember the magician who stood on the skywalk, and finally realize his significance: as unremarkable as he seemed at the time, he presided over rites of passage, leading them down paths less travelled by and initiating them into the ineffable knowledge of adulthood.
The Stolen Bicycle turns one bicycle into the stuff of legend. With a title that pays tribute to Vittorio De Sica’s Neo-Realist masterpiece Ladri di Biciclette, this story records the quotidian passions of people, flora, and fauna as they undergo modernization – from Japanese colonialization, which ended in the Pacific War, to postwar industrialization under the Kuomintang. As the wheel of fortune turns, the protagonists cycle from Taipei, on Taiwan’s northern tip, to Puli and Gangshan, the mountains of the central interior; from the Malay Peninsula to the jungles of northern Burma, and from one period in Taiwan’s history to another.
Interspersed among the ten chapters of The Stolen Bicycle are eight excerpts from an archive of notes on bicycle construction and evolution, as well as the narrator’s antique bicycle collection. It is a chronicle of an obsession with a stolen bicycle that contains important clues concerning its recovery, as well as an archaeological record of artifacts and their users as they develop, disappear and reappear. Hardly a typical nature writer, Wu Ming-Yi has extended his empathetic gaze to objects, which he sees in the longue durée of their production, consumption and dilapidation. In so doing, he communes with the minute, the marginal, and the material, and in his communion discovers a method for making sense of the Taiwan experience.
Wu Ming-Yi’s works have garnered mixed responses. Detractors disparage his narratives as baroque, his novels as kaleidoscopes in which themes get blurred. Supporters appreciate his story-telling skill, and his ability to convey historical memory, both human and environmental. Whether negative or positive, the intensity of the responses testifies to the relevance of his works, which by getting under our skin motivate us to question what fiction should be about and how it should be written. This year’s winner of the UDN Grand Literary Award, Wu Ming-Yi will continue to explore new answers to those questions.
The Ministry of Culture is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2016 Translation Grant Program! Please see the full list below or click here:
| Order | Applicant | Project Title | Grant (in NTD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Text Publishing | THE STOLEN BICYCLE English Translation | 500,000 |
| 2 | ENCICLOPÈDIA CATALANA S.L.U. | Sanmao's ”Dreaming the Olive Tree” Spanish translation and publication | 400,000 |
| 3 | 韓哲旻 | Dark Tourism through the Rebels’ City - An Alternative Guide for Taipei Korean version Publishing plan | 400,000 |
| 4 | Camelozampa s.n.c. | Translation into Italian of "Kiss and Goodbye" | 350,000 |
| 5 | mirobole editions | WAR OF THE BUBBLES | 340,000 |
| 6 | L'Asiathèque | French translation of The Illusionist on the Skywalk | 330,000 |
| 7 | Honford Star | The Steelyard: The Complete Fiction of Lai He | 300,000 |
| 8 | Hyundae Munhak | The River Darkens | 300,000 |
| 9 | ALMA | The Illusionist on the Skywalk | 280,000 |
| 10 | 魚住悅子 | Badai’s Anjiao Japanese Translation and Publishing Project | 250,000 |
| 11 | Mangmoom Culture | The Hospital into Thai | 250,000 |
| 12 | Mangmoom Culture | Dangerous Mind into Thai | 240,000 |
| 13 | Munhakdongne | GRANNY’S FAVOURITE TOY | 220,000 |
| 14 | 思潮社 | 思潮社翻譯出版《A夢》日文版 | 200,000 |
| 15 | Mi:Lu Publishing | Czech translation of Yang Mu´s work | 150,000 |
| 16 | Fandogamia Editorial, C.B. | The Worst Travel to Spain and France | 90,000 |
Application Period and Guidelines
The Ministry of Culture will accept applications for its Translation Grant Program starting Thursday, September 1. The grant is to encourage the publication of translation of Taiwan's literature, including fiction, non-fiction, picture books and comics, and help Taiwan's publishing industry to explore non-Chinese interantional markets. Eligible foreign publishers or natural persons can apply for grants up to NT$ 500,000. The application deadline is Friday, September 30.
More information about the Translation Grant Program is available on the Grant section of this website. The online application system to the grant application will be available from September 1.
Please read the Translation Grant Guidelines carefully before the application. Please use this form to apply online.
Instructions to the Online Application System
Please use only Chinese or English to fill in the application form. Please register your email and log in the online application system to start the application process.
Once the application form is completed, please click "Preview" to double check all the information you have filled in. To submit your application, please click "Send", then you will receive an application confirmation letter. If not, please contact [email protected] for further information.
If you click "Saved", your application will be saved in the system but it's not yet submitted. Please log in with your email and password to finish the online form and send your application before September 30, 2016. Once the application is sent, you can click the link in your application confirmation letter sent by the system to edit your application. Please be noted that all applications need to be sent before September 30, 2016.
One can only file five applications, please complete your current application and log in again to start a new one.
The Ministry is available to answer questions and offer support throughout the application period. Anyone with questions is encouraged to contact [email protected].