The Secret of Jiran's Life in Iowa City

‘The man in the bed looks at her. An enormous force seems to be pulling him into a world behind him, a world whose gates will soon be shut forever. She strokes his forehead gently.’

In the eighty ninth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are enfolding ourselves within Cocoon, the dreamlike and sometimes upsetting dual-bildungsroman and return to realism by post-85 author Zhang Yueran. Lost with me (yet ever so far away) somewhere in the low-hanging fog is the book’s translator, Jeremy Tiang. All time is one time, you poor thing; so join us, that we may better navigate it.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Meta news: We’re not blocked!(?)

• A new Condor Heroes film is in the works

• READ: an excerpt of Cloudland by Wu Ming-yi

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(茧 – jiǎn – cocoon)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Scar literature - Cultural Revolution trauma writing

• Chinese writers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (a long history)

• The Crow Road & The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

• The Promise Bird by Zhang Yueran

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// Handy TrChFic Links //

Help Support TrChFic // Episode Transcripts

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