Novelist Su Wei with translator Austin Woerner will discuss their new book, The Invisible Valley, at Brookline Booksmith on Thursday, July 12 at 7 pm.
When Chinese novelist Su Wei and his translator Austin Woerner first met in 2005, little did they know that their friendship would spark a ten-year-long experiment in creative co-translation that would take them from the classrooms of Yale to the mountains of Hainan Island and back again.
Join Woerner and Su and as they recount this literary odyssey and celebrate the publication of The Invisible Valley, Su’s first novel to be translated into English. Author and translator will reveal the story behind the story, a coming-of-age narrative set during the Cultural Revolution against a backdrop of rainforest landscapes, Taoist mysticism, and Cantonese folklore. In the process, they will share the joys and complexities of translation and their adventures in Chinese literature both on and off the page.
