Several years ago, I noticed that China was importing huge amounts of mineral resources from Africa, and busy signing contracts to collaborate in the long-term exploitation of even more. I wondered: But what was the People’s Republic importing from Africa, in terms of 文化产品, i.e., “cultural products,” an awkward, Marxist-sounding term that one often hears in Mandarin?
To satisfy my own curiosity, I began to document contemporary African fiction — mainly novels — that had been translated and published in the PRC. You can visit my bilingual mini-database, 非洲文学：中文译本 African Writing in Chinese Translation, to view the results.
Happily, I have been interviewed on this subject for a new publication — out just as of December 2023 — entitled Les circulations littéraires après Bandung. Edited by Pierre Boizette and Linda Rasoamanana and published by Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques, this collection of essays explores the literary impact of the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955, attended by representatives of 29 Asian and African countries, most of which were newly independent.
The published question and answer format is bilingual, i.e., brief questions in French, my answers in English. Below, I offer an excerpt from just one of my answers. The full publication is available in both PDF and hard copy at Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques or Numilog.
Excerpt from Q & A conducted with
Bruce Humes by Pierre Boizette
Historically and even today, People’s Literature Publishing is the undisputed leader in terms of introducing African writing to Chinese readers. As noted elsewhere in this interview, during 1958-64, it also published the bimonthly World Literature, comprising almost 200 poems, plays, prose texts, and so forth by African writers. Its current stable of high-profile authors include Chimamanda Adichie, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Le Clézio.
An early imprint of People’s Literature was Foreign Literature Publishing, notable for its African Literature Series. Launched in the 1980s, it included some of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s earliest works, Leopold Senghor’s poetry, and anthologies of African drama, novels and children’s fairy tales.
Zhejiang Business University Press collaborates with Zhejiang Normal University’s School of Foreign Languages to produce the African Humanities Classics in Translation Series. This normal university is home to the African Studies Institute — the first such research body founded by a Chinese university — and is regarded as a think-tank of sorts.
Shanghai Translation Publishing House made itself the talk of China’s publishing circle in 2021 with its purchase of all ten major works of fiction by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the new Nobel Prize Laureate. As of 3Q 2022, five of them have been launched in Chinese: Paradise, Admiring Silence, By the Sea, The Last Gift and Afterlives. Including those novels, Shanghai Translation told me they now own the Chinese-language rights for more than 20 African works, including 7 by Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz.
Other China publishers with at least 5 translated African titles to their name include Sino-Culture Press, specializing in North African Literature; Citic Press, 6 of Mia Couto’s novels from the Portuguese; Thinkingdom Media, one version of Chinua Achebe’s iconic Things Fall Apart; Taiwan’s Homeward Publishing, a series of novels from Francophone West Africa; Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing, titles by Algeria’s Mohammad Dib, and Chimamanda’s The Thing around your Neck; Beijing Yanshan Press, novels by Nobel Laureates Wole Soyinka and Nadime Gordimer; and World Affairs Press, publisher of an anthology of poetry, No Serenity Here, featuring poems translated from English, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Amharic.
Ethnic ChinaLit 