A literary nod to a Taiwanese novelist has made waves from a small French island.
Ushant, off the coast of France, awarded its Island Fiction Prize — the Salon d’Ouessant’s International Island Literature Fiction Award for 2015 — to the French translation of a novel by Taiwanese writer Wu Ming-yi (吳明益), author of The Man With Compound Eyes (複眼人).
The novel, an eco-fantasy about the near future in Taiwan, was translated into French by Gwennael Gaffric after being commissioned by Stock, a Paris publishing firm.
According to Gray Tan (譚光磊), Wu’s literary agent in Taipei, the French award is another feather in Wu’s cap, following separate English translations published in Britain and the US.
Gaffric’s translation was published in France last year, titled L’homme aux Yeux a Facettes in French, Tan said.
When asked how sales of the French translation were doing, Gaffric said in an e-mail that he was not sure, since Stock does not release sales figures to the public.
However, he said the prize was both a surprise and a good thing for the book’s reception in France.
Ushant is a small French island off the coast of Brittany in France. While the population in the winter months is about 1,000, in the summer, the island comes alive with tourists arriving by ferry or plane, with a boat ride to Brest, France, taking about two hours.
Ten years ago, a literary group on the island began awarding prizes for novels, poetry, photography books and nonfiction about islands and island nations around the world.
When asked how he felt about the winning the French award, Wu said was honored and touched that the jury recognized his novel and Gaffric’s translation, adding: “I hope that someday all people who live on islands, large and small, will have a chance to hear the stories of other island dwellers.”
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS