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.

“Last Quarter of the Moon” Long-listed for Banff Mountain Book Competition

My old friend and colleague from the Hong Kong days, Bruce Humes, has just had a book he translated from Chinese to English long-listed for a nice award.

Bruce says:
I’ve just learned that Last Quarter of the Moon, my translation of Chi Zijian’s 《额尔古纳河右岸》, has been nominated for the “Mountain Fiction and Poetry Award.” Winners will be announced November 6, 2014 at The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in Banff, Alberta

You can read his post about it here. Bruce and I toiled for the same publishing company for a few years and I am happy for his success with this book and wanted more people to know about it.