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Monday, August 7, 2017

Confessions of a Jade Lord

Alat Asem’s Novel “Confessions of a Jade Lord” (时间悄悄的嘴脸)




Bruce Humes and I worked together back at Asian Sources in Hong Kong. We worked in different departments but often had lunch together, escaping the company cafeteria in favor of some local restaurant, usually in Aberdeen (Little Hong Kong) where his fluency in Cantonese came in handy. He also was fluent in Mandarin, which meant he did a lot of work for the company in Mainland China over the years. 

We both left Hong Kong and full-time trade press work, but fortunately have stayed in touch. These days he does Chinese-to-English literary translations from a variety of locations around Asia (with a short period studying in Turkey). He recently translated a novel by a bilingual Uyghur author, named Alat Asem. It's a curious work, oddly reminiscent in my strange mind of some work by contemporary Japanese novelist, at least stylistically.

You can read an excerpt of the book at http://bruce-humes.com/archives/11723 and make your own decision.

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